


Ninjas and Aliens

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Naruto, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (I cannot stress that one enough), (in the future at least; not for a while yet though), Alcohol, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Memes, Uchiha Sasuke Being an Asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9558950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: The Galra were planning to attack a planet with unusually high levels of quintessence. The low levels of technology on the planet had previously left it beneath Galra notice, but quintessence flares from recent years had drawn interest from all the wrong places.Team Voltron heard, and responded, and was utterly unprepared for the strangeness that awaited them on the planet below.





	1. The Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> If you know me at all, you can guess exactly where this is going, going by a tiny section in the last scene.

“Okay,” Shiro said as the paladins gathered around the small 3D map of this particular section of space. “Pidge, you’re the one that got this; do you wanna talk?”

Pidge readjusted their glasses as they leaned closer to the console. “Okay, so I’ve been tracking some of the chatter coming out over the Galra airwaves, and going through it with help from some members of the Blade of Marmora. Apparently there’s still a few planets they haven’t colonized in this area, and we know which one they’re going to be attacking next. We even know why, since they keep talking about how unnaturally high the quintessence levels are. We don’t know much about the planet other than taht, but preliminary scans confirm the quintessence thing, and indicate that it’s pretty similar to Earth, in the sense that we won’t have to worry about the food or the air, and Altean records indicate no sapient or sentient species, but we’ve gotten a look at it on the sensors and there’s definitely some kind of technology. The visible-light images definitely show population centers with what is _probably_ electric lighting.”

“Like when you take nighttime satellite pictures of the Earth and you see New York and LA and other big cities as massive bright spots, and stuff like that,” Hunk said.

“Not quite as developed, probably, but yeah. Might just be that there’s fewer people, though.” Pidge shrugged. “We’ve cast about local information networks to see if we could pick anything up, and… look, it’s weird.”

They scratched the back of their head and seemed to struggle with words for a bit. “Nobody’s… nobody’s really gone on-planet for like a millennium and a half, but the last time anyone did, they took pictures and measurements and stuff, and all sources indicate that the inhabitants are basically human.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Basically?” Lance said as slowly as possible. “What do you mean by _basically?_ ”

“Like…there’s no way to check for certain, but all available information points to yes, despite how impossible it seems?” Pidge made a vague motion with their arms. “I don’t know, Lance. I don’t know. All gathered biological information that we gathered from interplanetary information networks indicates they’re human. _I don’t know how._ ”

“When you say interplaneta—”

“Not Galra. Sort of. Technically under Galra rule, not run by actual Galra.” Pidge interrupted Shiro before he managed to finish the question. “So, um… I’m guessing we just get to the surface, hope the translation matrixes work without any outside translation dictionaries to work off of, and communicate the situation?”

“The translation technology should work if the lions or the castle are close enough to pick up on the languages from… well, from the heads of the locals.” Allura pursed her lips. “I’m aware that you find that intrusive when it comes to privacy—”

“Because it is,” Hunk pointed out.

“—but it’s just how the technology works, and there isn’t a similarly efficient method that’s _less_ invasive.” Allura finished.

“You put nanobots in our heads,” Keith said. “Like, before you even woke up.”

“The castle released them automatically, Keith, you can’t blame me for an _automatic process_ that—”

Shiro turned his eyes to the ceiling as an old argument began to brew again. Allura was ultimately the most mature person on board at any given time, but criticizing her or Altean customs was liable to put even her on the defensive.

(Shiro had gotten translation technology introduced to his system before he’d been in the Galra’s hands for more than an hour. The Altean nanobots hadn’t really phased him, in comparison.)

Well, they’d land eventually.

o.o.o.o.o

They got there before the Galra, though only by an hour or two. Allura and Coran decided to keep the ship in orbit instead of landing, but Shiro didn’t want to get any more surprises than they already had, and asked Pidge to see if they could get any scans from drones sent to get a closer look. If nothing else, they could get a better idea of where the major seats of power lay.

_“What do you mean, there might be more than one leader?” Allura asked._

_“If it’s anything like Earth, then there’s likely going to be individual countries. I know that most of the alien species we’ve seen tend to band together as one collective unit, but we don’t do that back home, and if these people are as human as they seem, it’s likely that they won’t either,” Shiro explained._

_Allura made a face, like it was all a bit silly to her. “Fractured governments have gone utterly obsolete on most planets, you know.”_

_“Good for them, but they’re not what we’re dealing with,” Keith said before Shiro could get any words out._

_Shiro shrugged. “He’s not wrong.”_

Which lead to the current situation, where they were floating in orbit over the planet below, a handful of different drones travelling around.

“Hey, guys?” Pidge’s voice came over the intercom. “You might wanna see this.”

They did something that got a few visuals on each lion’s screen, plus the castle’s bridge.

“Is that the quintessence map?” Allura asked, and it was the same one Shiro wanted a look at. “Some of those signatures are _massive_.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking we go where the biggest one is. They might be able to help.” Pidge’s voice crackles a bit. “But no, I sent one of the visual drones over to get a closer look, and… listen, just take a look at the visible-spectrum shots from drone five.”

Shiro did, and his stomach turned over in a way it really shouldn’t have.

“Is… is that Mt. Rushmore?” Hunk asked. “Wait, no, the heads are different, but it’s the same sort of—”

“They’re jumping over roofs,” Keith noted, “and I think I just—”

Lance’s voice filtered through. “—breathing _fire?_ How could someone—”

“ _Guys!_ ” Pidge interrupted. “That’s all interesting and important, but… Shiro, please tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not.” Shiro keeps his eyes fixed on the signs that shouldn’t exist, not here. “I can read all the signs.”

“…but I thought the translation matrix didn’t work with written words,” Lance said after a moment. “Though… that looks _really_ familiar…”

“It’s Japanese,” Shiro confirmed. “And it’s almost identical to what we have back home; the only differences I’m seeing are… old. It’s outdated, but not by much. Like the language was plucked wholesale from home, but a few decades ago instead of now.”

“And _that_ ,” Pidge said, “More than anything, is what I’m worried about. The quintessence, the physical abilities, all that? We’ve seen aliens that can do weirder stuff. But an identical language with a near-identical species several galaxies away from Earth? That shouldn’t be happening.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever even _heard_ of something like that happening before,” Coran noted. “Similar species sometimes, but an identical language should be impossible.”

Shiro took a closer look at the video feed from the drones that had made it to street-level. “I can’t tell much without audio, but there are definitely some cultural cues and other stuff that are similar, at minimum, as well. If nothing else, the food looks identical to some of what we have back on Earth.”

“Oh man, can we get some while we’re here?” Hunk asked immediately. “I’m tired of cooking with space goo, and I know I can use stuff that we pick up from the planets we visit, but I’d really love to use some familiar ingredients again.”

“We’ll see what we can manage,” Shiro promised. “Princess Allura? I’m thinking we do as Pidge suggested and go for the biggest concentration of quintessence, then see where we can go from there.”

“I think we should try hailing them digitally first, so that they know you’re coming,” Allura countered.

“I don’t think they necessarily have the technology for that,” Pidge grumbled, “Or if they do, they’re probably not pointing it at the sky.”

“Give it a shot anyway?” Hunk said.

It didn’t work.

“Alright team, if they haven’t had much contact with aliens before, like our Earth, then they probably means they haven’t heard of Voltron, also like our Earth. That means that we probably don’t want to land too close,” Shiro started ordering. “We fly over the town, low enough to be seen but not attacked, and then land maybe a mile and a half out. Everyone stay _inside_ their lions.”

“Shiro, this seems like a lot of precautions.” Allura said. “Are you sure they’re necessary?”

“If they’re as human as they look, then I’m basing their possible reactions off of the ones that our governments back home would have.” Shiro started guiding his lion lower, until he was sure it would be visible from the ground. He dialed back the speed as well. “The fact that these people also appear to have superpowers is just another reason to be worried. We’re just going to keep the potential aggression to a minimum if we can.”

“Well, hurry it up.” Allura’s voice was frustrated, if only a little. “The Galra are only three varga out.”

“So… like two and a half hours,” Pidge sighed. “Great.”

Shiro couldn’t help but agree.

o.o.o.o.o

They landed a mile and a half out, and it only took ten minutes for a set of maybe a dozen people to show up. They all wore some kind of uniform, and some were visibly carrying weapons. Military then.

Shiro knew that would be the response.

He wondered if he should try speaking English, which he knew better, and trust the translation matrix to take care of it, or if he should just try Japanese from the get-go.

He went with English.

“We come in peace,” he declared through his lion, allowing Black to broadcast his words to the outside. “And we come with a warning. An alien army is headed for this planet to claim it as their. We are the paladins of Voltron, tasked with stopping them.”

The one at the front, seemingly in charge, had a face that was largely unreadable due to the large amount of fabric that covered it. His hair was either silver or white, and shifted color in the light. He stepped forward, and while he seemed calm, his stance is one that was prepared for a battle, if only one in hand-to-hand.

“While I’m inclined to believe that you’re not from around here,” the man said, “I’m not entirely convinced that you’re telling the truth. We’ve had some poor experiences with foreign and not-quite-human powers, you see. You’ll forgive us for being cautious.”

“We have two and a half hours,” Pidge said flatly, and Shiro sighed. “Believe us or not, there will be an attack. If we’re lucky, then we can keep it in orbit and you won’t be affected. If we’re not, then you need to be prepared to fight off any ships that make it down here. It’s your choice if you’re ready or not.”

The man didn’t move visibly, but Shiro thought he could sense a change in the air. “Let me contact my superior.”

“That’s acceptable,” Shiro said.

The man bit a thumb, did some strange hand signs, and then slammed a hand into the ground.

A dog appeared.

“I want to know how he did that,” Pidge said after a moment on the private channel, their voice strangled. “That was quintessence, and I want to know how he did that. If we can _replicate_ it, then… Hunk, what do you think?”

Shiro didn’t listen as the two began chatting with each other about the usage of quintessence here, with occasional input from Allura and Coran on the comms. He just watched as the tiny pug received its orders and scampered off to, presumably, fetch this man’s superior.

o.o.o.o.o

The superior was, in fact, a very blond woman who was apparently a little less sober than Shiro would have normally hoped.

“Is she _drunk?_ ” Lance demanded, thankfully over private comms and not broadcasting.

“That… that doesn’t seem like a good sign,” Keith said after a moment. “Shiro?”

“We deal with it.” He made a decision as he said that, and began maneuvering his lion down to a lying position. “I’m going down to meet with them face to face. Everyone else _stay in your lions_ , unless I give you a direct order otherwise.”

“I still think you’re being overly cautious,” Allura said.

“I prefer cautious over dead,” Shiro muttered. The woman in charge was looking fairly annoyed by now, waiting for some response.

Shiro didn’t see how her face changed as the Black Lion’s ramp descended, but there were definitely a lot of drawn weapons once he could see out again. He put both hands up and took a few steps forward. “As I said, we mean no harm. We just want to help.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, and some of the red in her cheeks and eyes seemed to recede even as she looked at him.

(With what he’d seen in some of the scans, Shiro wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people here could control how drunk they were.)

“Well, are you going to take that helmet off or not?” She demanded. “From what I can see, you look as human as any of us.”

“That’s a complicated situation that we haven’t quite figured out yet,” Shiro admitted as he removed his helmet. “As far as we can tell, there’s an unnerving number of coincidences in regards to biology and culture between your planet and mine, not counting your people’s ability to manipulate quintessence. So… ultimately, yes, I suppose I am as human as any of you.”

“Not counting the arm!” Lance’s voice came through the speakers on Shiro’s helmet, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Shiro didn’t sigh, but he kind of wanted to as he looked up and found himself faced by some expectant stares. “I have a prosthetic limb, made from alien technology. It’s hidden by the flight suit.”

There was a momentary disappointment that flickered through several pairs of eyes, and he reminded himself that some things just needed to happen for diplomacy, no matter how strange they were or how uncomfortable they made him feel.

He held up his right arm and let it grow warm, the pink glow bringing technological patterns to life on the fabric. After a few moments, he let it go back to normal, and then dropped it. When he looked back over at the locals, there were a few people with their hands held in front of them in more strange signs, and looks of concentration on their faces.

“Impressive,” the woman in charge says. “I’d like to get a look at that once everything is over, if that’s alright. We don’t tend to have a lot of technological prosthetics around here.”

“Some of the members of my team are tech experts. I can’t promise that they’ll be able to give you much that you can implement, but sharing some information isn’t a problem.” Shiro paused a moment before continuing. “I’m aware that it’s unlikely for the planet to have a single central government, so if you could give me a run-down of the set-up before we move on, I would appreciate it.”

“Five major countries, each with a hidden village full of shinobi that function as the primary military force. One more major country with samurai instead. There are minor countries, and minor hidden villages, but if there are any major decisions that affect that entire continent happening, then it’s between the six of us.” The woman crossed her arms. “I am Senju Tsunade, Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure.”

“…so… half of that didn’t translate,” Pidge’s voice came from the speakers on the helmet, tinny from such a distance.

Shiro hefted his helmet up to bring his mouth closer to it, even if they could probably all hear him fine. “I’m pretty sure those are official titles and proper nouns, Pidge.”

“It means I’m the fifth leader of the military force of the Land of Fire,” the woman explained. “And you are?”

“Shirogane Takashi,” he said, mouth automatically adjusting to the switched order that he always used when he visited family back in Japan. “I’m the leader of Voltron, which is the five-man team that pilots the lion robots behind me. They technically belong to Princess Allura of the planet Altea, who is currently orbiting the planet in the spaceship-castle that serves as our base of operations.”

“Well then…” Senju Tsunade pursed her lips. “Let’s see if we can’t get into contact with the other Kage and make some battle plans.”

Shiro nodded.

o.o.o.o.o

He left Hunk, Lance, and Keith behind in their lions to be ready just in case something happened. Pidge, however, was a communications expert to the core. They would be needed to make steady contact with the other leaders possible at all.

“She’s very young,” a woman commented. Shizune, Shiro thought she’d said her name was.

“They,” he corrected as mildly as he could.

Shizune’s eyebrow quirked up for a moment, but she didn’t seem too bothered. “Alright, then. Still, I know we start training shinobi young, but for a civilian…”

Shiro shrugged. “We didn’t choose to join this fight. We got pulled in, and we fit the bill for the pilots that were needed. Now we just have to make the best of it and uphold the responsibility we’ve been given.”

Shizune hummed. “I suppose.”

“So these,” Pidge brought up some visuals of various Galra they’d encountered. “Are the Galra. They’ve got an empire spanning much of the known universe. That’s Zarkon, he’s the leader. That guy with the long hair is Prince Lotor. We’ve got some other known members of their military, but I won’t get into that now since we don’t have the time. We have a certain number of Galra rebels on our side as well, but we’ve lost a number of our inside operatives, so we don’t have as much inside information as we used to. We’ve snuck in before, of course, but it’s easier with someone there to smooth things over.”

“It always is,” one of the Kage said. Shiro couldn’t tell which one. “But you’re not planning any sneak attacks this time, are you?”

“No, this is a head-on fight; if we did need to sneak in, we’d only be able to use a handful of people to do it, since Galra tech only responds to Galra blood or other Galra tech. The problem is that your planet, from what we can tell, has no experience with any kind of space battles, which means that you’ll probably be relegated to ground-based fighting.” Pidge looked up at Shiro hopefully. “Unless…”

“A number of the abilities that we’ve seen since we arrived would be fairly useful in space combat, but most of space combat, until you get inside the ship, is done from a distance with energy weapons,” Shiro explained. “Unless you can use your abilities _through_ space suits, without damaging yourselves, you may not necessarily be able to help much unless we get you inside a Galra warship to take people down individually.”

“And the warships are usually the lions’ job since they’re so damn big anyway,” Pidge said.

“Naruto and Sasuke could probably work with that,” Kakashi said, and there were a round of nods from the screens in the room. “If Susanoo and the nine-tails work through these suits.”

“We’re definitely sending Team Kakashi…” Tsunade said. “I’d like to send Rock Lee and Hyuuga Hinata as well. The rest of their generation uses techniques that are too physical to work through what we know of these suits.”

Shiro didn’t comment; he didn’t know enough about their individual fighters to be able to help decide who went up.

“If pure chakra can get through the suits when nothing else can, it may mean that it would be prudent to contact Otogakure,” a young man with a spiky ponytail said.

Faces soured all around.

“Like we’d trust anything to their ilk,” the eldest of the kage muttered.

“They did not choose that life,” the youngest, a redhead, said. “And we know how powerful those chains are.”

“And if they turn?” The old man demanded. “They chose to return to Orochimaru after the Kaguya war, who knows how their minds work?”

“They chose _nothing_ ,” the younger of two redheads argued back. “They—”

Shiro coughed, hoping to divert any oncoming argument. “We don’t have an endless supply of suits, so it would be best to send out only the most powerful.” He paused. “Providing they can channel their abilities through the suits, of course.”

“We only have another hour and a half until the Galra get here,” Pidge said, tapping out a few things on their keyboard. “And the Princess wants us up there so we can suit up at least half an hour before the Galra are within shooting range, and we’d like five or ten minutes to pick people up before that, so…  you have forty-five minutes to pick your people.”

“How’s the Blade of Marmora doing?” Shiro asked quietly as the political leaders went back to weighing the pros and cons of their soldiers.

“They’re ready to go whenever,” Pidge answered. “And Kolivan is trying to develop a strategy with Allura right now.”

“Can I help?” One of the shinobi interrupted.

Shiro turned to look at the boy who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, and even that was likely a stretch. It was the spiky-haired boy from earlier, a slouching thing with a lazy look in his eye. He didn’t look like he belonged in a meeting of the strongest of this world’s political powers, but… he had to be here for a reason, right?

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Shiro asked after a moment. He was sure they’d been introduced, but there were a lot of people to remember.

“Nara Shikamaru, current head tactician for Konoha,” he said, and then yawned. “This is all pretty troublesome, but if these aliens are as dangerous as you say, then I should probably help with coordinating the attack. You know how to fight in space, but I know the shinobi that you’re going to be working with.”

Shiro’s eyes flicked over momentarily to Tsunade, and then back to Shikamaru, who shrugged.

“You can ask her if you want; I’m just offering. She’ll probably say it’s fine.”

“We’ll consider it,” Shiro said, instead of committing to, well, anything.

The door crashed open.

“BAA-CHAN!”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Tsunade muttered.

“BAA-CHAN, SAKURA SAID THERE WERE ALIENS ATTACKING!”

A young blond man raced over to Tsunade and grabbed her by the shoulders. There were strange whisker-like marks on his face, and he seemed to be almost glowing.

“I know, brat. We’re getting together a plan to fight back along with some people who are a bit friendlier.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at Shiro and Pidge.

“Hello,” Shiro said, waving awkwardly.

The blond immediately focused on Tsunade again, his gaze a little uncomfortably intense. “I’m going.”

“That was already in the plans, brat, now get the hell out of my office.” Tsunade turned back to the other kage.

“NARUTO!”

Shiro flinched at how loud the voice of the woman who next entered was. Pink hair, he noticed, and a pale green eyes; it all looked fairly natural, so he considered the idea that these people were possibly just a little less human than back on Earth.

“Sakura-chan, we’re gonna fight aliens!”

The woman grabbed the blond man by the front of his jacket and shook him back and forth. “How many times do I have to tell you not to barge in when diplomatic shit is happening?! Shizune called me all the way from the hospital to come and get you out! I was about to go into surgery!”

“A-actually, Sakura-chan?” The short-haired woman who was, apparently, Shizune held up one finger hesitantly, as though trying to get attention but not entirely sure she wanted to get involved. “I called you here because you’re going to be part of the strike team we send up. Most of Team Kakashi is pretty well-suited to the kind of fighting that’s going to be happening, so we’re sending you all up.”

“Oh.”

Naruto grinned, despite the fact that he was still being held several inches above the ground, feet swinging freely. “See, I didn’t fu—”

“He did barge in here without permission, though.” Shizune added calmly, as though commenting on the weather.

What followed was a flurry of shouting that was too fast to comprehend, and then Naruto getting thrown (or maybe punched?) through a wall.

Shiro slowly leaned forward to look out the window, watching as Naruto flew so far out that he was soon impossible to see.

“Whoa,” Pidge breathed.

Tsunade’s only comment was an offhand, “That’s coming out of your paycheck.”

None of the locals seemed even a little surprised by this turn of events, as they all immediately returned to the discussion of whom to send without questioning the sudden and somewhat inexplicable violence.

“Yeah,” Shikamaru sighed, getting Shiro’s attention. “That happens sometimes.”

“Right,” Shiro muttered. “Just happens sometimes.”

Well, at least they’d have some good backup this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the most generic of about four different Voltron/Naruto crossovers that I've been considering recently.


	2. The Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a lot of planning, and some results of that planning, but not much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate writing fight scenes so you get this instead.

Pidge sent off some coordinates to the other lions and the castle, and then started packing up. They had a list of several people from each village to pick up, something that Shiro immediately commandeered a copy of.

“Lance, you take Kiri. Keith, you get Kumo. Hunk to Suna, and Pidge to Iwa. I’ll collect the people from here and… you said the last was Oto?” Shiro looked to Shikamaru for confirmation, as the paladins sounded off through his helmet.

The man shrugged, waiting for the noise of the lions taking off to die out. “There’s only one person coming to mind from there that I’d trust with this, but she’s powerful.”

Shiro shook his head and sighed. “Alright, then. How many more people are we waiting on here?”

“Well, we’re still waiting on Lee and Sasuke,” Shikamaru said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it as they wait just a few more minutes. “But I think that’s everyone that’s left, since Yamato left in Green with the short one.”

Controlling plants, Shiro thought, was a bit odd, but it at least fit in with some of the other things he’d seen people do with quintessence.

“Come along, Uchiha-kun! We have a most youthful battle ahead of us!”

The voice was distant, but plenty loud enough to hear even from here.

“That would be Rock Lee,” Shikamaru informed him. “Apparently he drew the short stick of getting to convince Sasuke to come along.”

Shiro questioned, not for the first time that afternoon, if these people were going to be more trouble than they were worth.

“Sasuke!” Naruto yelled, taking off at a sprint for a man with remarkably spiky hair that was a few dozen yards down the road, and had just come around a bend. The man stared blandly as Naruto got closer, and then smoothly stepped to the side so that Naruto ran into a wall instead.

He stared at Naruto’s momentarily silent form on the ground, and then up at the assembled shinobi, Shiro, and the Black Lion.

“Oops,” he said, in an entirely unconvincing manner.

Naruto popped up into a sitting position, glaring at the man. “Sasuke, that was a dick move.”

Oh dear.

“Sakura-chan! Tell Sasuke that that was a dick move!”

Sakura nodded gravely. “It was a dick move, Sasuke.”

“Enough with the dick talk,” Shikamaru said, his voice not so much _commanding_ as just _tired._ “Or do you want Sai to show up?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Sai.”

Shiro stiffened, but did not attack, as a voice spoke up behind him.

“Kakashi-sensei, I think you’re scaring the civvie guy,” Sakura stage-whispered. Next to her, the woman introduced earlier as Hyuuga Hinata pursed her lips in suppressed humor, and turned away to greet the man that was apparently Rock Lee.

“I’m not used to the level of skill that the people of this planet possess in certain disciplines,” Shiro said after a moment. “It’s rather uncanny.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Kakashi said, clapping Shiro on the shoulder. “Well, that’s everyone. Shall we?”

Shiro took stock of the shinobi that trooped into the Black Lion behind him. All the aforementioned people, along with some woman with wild black hair and red eyes that had been introduced as Yuuhi Kurenai, and a young blonde woman with pale blue eyes that had made a beeline for Sakura as soon as she’d shown up, introduced as Yamanaka Ino.

It was going to be a tight fit.

One of them, Kakashi, accompanied Shiro to the cockpit while the others were clustered into the temporary storage area that the lions had for the occasional passengers and cargo.

“Paladins, how are those pick-ups coming?”

“I’m done, but uh…” Lance’s voice filtered through. “You know that gif from some old thing that’s like ‘well mark me down as scared _and_ horny’ or whatever?”

Shiro took a deep breath and then let it slowly, loud enough for Lance to hear. “What did you do?”

“Their leader decided to come along and she’s downstairs where she can’t hear me and she’s really hot but also scares the _shit_ out of me.”

“Please don’t tell me you caused an incident?”

“What? No, no, I didn’t do anything. She threatened one of her assistants for like… no reason that I could tell? But there was a threat and lava and I am just… I am _jittery_ , Shiro, this is freaking me out. She had this really pretty smile on and she threatened to burn him alive and then spit lava over the side of the bridge into the water like it was nothing?”

“…and you’re attracted to her.”

“She’s _really_ pretty,” Lance reiterated. “I’m also not going to flirt with her, because as mentioned, she scares me. A lot.”

“Well, that’s a first,” Keith muttered, his voice filtering through. “Sounds like you got the better end of the deal, honestly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“One of the guys this place is sending won’t stop rapping,” Keith said, sounding as though he was speaking through gritted teeth.

“Is it at least good ra—”

“No.”

“Don’t insult the locals, you two,” Shiro said, tone curt. “Hunk? Pidge?”

“Almost done, dude,” Hunk said. “There’s not a whole lot of people coming, but the leader is, and apparently he can control sand? So Yellow decided to show me how to use her to store that, so this guy has enough ammo.”

“Understood. Pidge?”

“I’ve got like… one person.” Pidge’s voice was annoyed. “I asked and they just shrugged and said their village tended to produce ninjas that used, like, earth techniques? And that since the fights were mostly going to be taking place with nothingness and metal, their abilities weren’t as easily geared towards the fighting.”

“One is better than nothing, Pidge.” Shiro eased the Black Lion down towards the trees as Kakashi pointed towards a seemingly normal meadow in the forest, just barely large enough to land in.

As he got closer, he noticed that there was a person standing in the field. The figure resolved into a young woman with red hair, wearing a black cloak as he landed, though he couldn’t make out much more due to the height of the lion’s head.

“And there’s Karin. That’s the last of us,” Kakashi said quietly, leaning over Shiro’s chair a little to get a better look as someone headed out of lion to greet the woman. Shiro thought he could see glasses on her, but wasn’t entirely sure.

“We do need to hurry,” he said after a moment, when they two outside still hadn’t headed back into the lion.

“Give Sasuke a moment longer to talk to her,” Kakashi said. “It’s not the optimal situation, but she _would_ be useful in this situation. She’s a hard sell on international cooperation, though. Most of Oto is.”

There was a wealth of stories in those words, but Shiro found that he thought he’d much rather get going, and then maybe listen to the history of the continent _after_ the Galra were fought off.

The two outside finally seemed to come to some agreement, because they headed in. Shiro waited a few moments after they left his sight for the Black Lion to confirm that they’d made their way fully inside, then hit the buttons to close her up and get back in the air.

“Princess? We’re on our way.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Karin and Gaara are on defense,” Shikamaru said in the middle of the strategy meeting, with the Galra only half an hour away; they had more time to plan than they thought they would. “I know you’re both very good at offense as well, but you’re also the only large-scale defensive techniques we have.”

Karin raised an eyebrow.

“You said you had Kushina’s barrier technique down, right? Sasuke mentioned something about that…” Shikamaru pitched his voice like he suddenly wasn’t sure, but it seemed to be a fruitless worry.

“It’s not as strong as hers reportedly were, but…” Red lips quirked up into a mirthless smirk. “I think I could handle a bijuu or two. Not for long, of course, but the potential is there.”

“Is that supposed to sound like a threat?” The Raikage demanded, leaning over the table aggressively.

Karin’s face shuttered, suddenly blank of emotion. “Of course not, Raikage-sama. The only bijuu or jinchuuriki I’d use those chains on are my cousin, and that would of course be only in jest.”

“In any case,” Kakashi interrupted the Raikage’s attempted retort smoothly. “Does that sit well with everyone?”

“I have no qualms with the plan,” Gaara answered. “Who do we have planned to remain aboard?”

“We want to conserve suits as much as possible,” Allura said, working with a hologram to pull up a representation of the lions, the ship, and the Galra forces. “If your abilities do not require you to be outside the ship, then we’d like for you to stay aboard. If you are here primarily for strategizing but not as a fighter, then the same applies.”

“So Shikamaru and I will be staying on board,” Kakashi muttered. “Gaara as well.”

“Kurenai-sensei and I can both work long distance,” Ino volunteered.

“Ao will remain on board for… coordination purposes,” the red-haired woman that Lance had brought smiled in a way that was both very pretty and unnervingly threatening. Shiro couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly, the smile seemed so threatening, but it made him want to step back and put someone else between them.

He didn’t, of course, but he could see Lance edging around to stand behind Hunk. Keith had, for whatever reason, opted to remain behind in his lion.

The man, Ao (and wasn’t that going to be a fun issue to work around; a man whose name literally meant blue, and a Lion referred to by her blue color working the same mission), was engaged in an awkward “I’m not looking at you but am entirely aware of your every move” situation with Hyuuga Hinata for some reason.

Shiro was… fairly certain this was more local politics that he didn’t want to actually know anything about.

“Mabui will remain aboard as well,” the Raikage said.

“Yamato can stay aboard the Green Lion, I think. The only reason he came along was that we thought Mokuton would work well with the powers you mentioned, after all,” Kakashi said, watching with careful eyes as Allura shifted icons representing individuals from the castle ship to other areas. “Sasuke and Naruto will be… free-floating. Killer Bee as well, I assume?”

“He will be,” the Raikage nodded, putting a quelling hand on Bee’s shoulder before he could say anything. “Boarding the warship… I’ll be with that party. Darui as well.”

“Sakura, Hinata, and Lee will be doing so as well,” Kakashi said. “Mizukage-sama?”

“Choujuuro and I will be coming with that set. I believe Kurotsuchi-san also indicated an interest?”

“Yep,” the short-haired woman in question leaned over the table a little to get a better look. “Gramps decided to stay down on-planet and most of our other ninjas aren’t really suited to space combat, so I’m all we’ve got up here, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get in on the action at least a little.”

“Get us to the hull and we can make our own ways in,” Sakura said, poking at the hologram of the Galra warship before Coran ushered her away. She pursed her lips before continuing. “I don’t know how strong those walls are, but if I can punch down a mountain, then I don’t think _that’s_ going to be a problem.”

“I’d like to know what you think your people on the outside are going to be doing,” Allura said, rotating the icons for Sasuke, Naruto, and Killer Bee. “I’d like to trust your judgement, but…”

“They’re skilled at large-scale attacks,” Kakashi summarized. “And the least likely to get trapped if, for some reason, nobody is able to come and fetch them after the fighting is over.”

“How?” Pidge asked, craning their head to get a look over their personal console.

“I can do this weird floating thing?” Naruto explained, poorly.

The Raikage put a hand over Killer Bee’s mouth and shortly said. “Tentacles.”

Sasuke blinked slowly when he saw people looking at him. “…I have eyes, don’t I?”

“Don’t be a jackass, Sasuke,” Naruto popped up behind Sasuke and started tugging at his face. “That’s not helping _aaaaaaanyone_.”

Sasuke drove an elbow into Naruto’s stomach, then massaged at his face with one hand. He took a look at Sakura and shrugged. “He started that one.”

“Explain to the people helping defend our planet why it’s not an issue if you get stuck out there, Sasuke-kun.” Sakura said, smiling.

“My Rinnegan confers a certain degree of teleportation ability.” Sasuke scratched the back of his head, his black cloak lifting just enough to indicate that the other arm was missing from about the same point as Shiro’s.

Huh.

There were _three_ amputees in the room. Shiro was used to be alone in that respect. Sasuke and the Raikage didn’t seem to have opted to get prosthetics, however.

(Shiro technically hadn’t either; Haggar just decided to give him one.)

Sasuke shot his teammates a look as though asking if that were enough, and then moved away from the center of attention as Coran began giving instructions to individuals on how to put on the space suits. Shiro was unsurprised to note that Sasuke avoided the Konoha shinobi. Instead, he wended his way over to Karin and stood at her side, their elbows just barely brushing each other.

She raised an eyebrow at this, but didn’t comment, instead focusing back on Coran’s lecture.

“I’ll take care of communications,” Ino said, hands on hips as she looked at the holograms. “With this few people, it shouldn’t be a strain.”

“The helmets have built-in short range comm units,” Allura informed her.

“And if they get damaged?” Ino challenged, propping one hand on her hip. “What then?”

Allura frowned. “You mean to imply you have a communication method available to you that wouldn’t be open to damage?”

Ino grinned, something smug in the expression that Shiro found unnerving and unbecoming of her. “Of course. I’m a Yamanaka. This is the sort of thing I’m trained from since childhood.”

“Hi, yeah, you still haven’t told us what it _is_ ,” Pidge said, raising a hand and wiggling their fingers.

Ino’s grin dropped into something closer to a pout. “It would be a mind-link. I can transmit thoughts, images, sensations, whatever. Pick them up, too. It’s what we use when the distances are too large for radios.”

“What’s the max range on that?” Shiro asked.

“In terms of distance? Um… I’m not sure, I haven’t had a chance to test it in a while, and it changes depending on how many people I’m working with.” Ino cocked a hip. “I can do a transmission to about sixty thousand people for fifteen seconds before it’s too much of a strain.  A group this size? Multi-directional transmissions for hours without any adverse effects other than some minimal chakra drain.”

“I’d prefer the alien comm links, personally,” Sasuke volunteered. Karin, at his side, eyed them all blankly. Her expression was almost dismissive, if anything, and her eyes came to rest on the hologram, a neutral ground if there was one. Sasuke continued, pretending he hadn’t noticed the change in the air of the room. “I get the feeling that the mental links might be a bit more invasive with this small of a group.”

“Let’s hold that in reserve, then,” Shiro said, in an attempt to diffuse the situation. “It’s definitely a useful option if they hit us with something that knocks out the comms, but we have enough non-human fighters on our side and existing mental links due to the lions that it’s probably safer to avoid complicating that.”

“Shiro’s right,” Allura said, shooting him a thankful look that he was sure absolutely no one missed, considering they all claimed to be ninjas. “As useful as that sounds, we haven’t tested how it would interact with non-human physiology or the lions, so it’s safer to use the comm units that are built into the space suits for now.”

“But—”

The older woman nearby put a hand on Ino’s shoulder and shook her head. The meaning was clear: let it go.

(Kurenai? Shiro was having trouble keeping track of names, but the meaning matched her eyes closely enough for him to think he got it right.)

“Five minutes,” Karin said abruptly, and most of the room turned to face her.

“Ne, you’re sure?” Naruto asked.

“I don’t know what their range of attack is, but they’ll be _here_ in five minutes,” she said, glancing out the window. “I can’t see them yet, but… it’s not like there’s a lot of interference, is there? They’re far away, but they move fast.”

“She’s right. We’ve got maybe four minutes until they’re within range of attack,” Pidge confirmed from their station. “We have to get into position _now_.”

 _Let’s hope this works_ , Shiro thought.

o.o.o.o.o

The ninjas were fast, at least. They had almost no trouble getting dressed, and the handful that were getting temporary rides with the paladins had minimal trouble getting to the hangars once Coran gave them a light-up path to follow.

(“So should we just… tie them off?” Sasuke asked, wiggling the stump of his arm so that the extra fabric of the space suit flopped around. He glanced at the Raikage, who had a similar issue, though he was making less of a show of it.)

(Coran ended up getting some tape so that they could just fold the extra suit fabric back and out of the way.)

“Bet I’m gonna kick more ass than you, bastard,” a cheerful voice came over the comms.

“Since when have you ever managed that?”

Oh, lovely. More bickering, just like Lance and Keith. Hopefully, Shiro could nip the argument in the bud before it got too far.

“Keep the chatter off the comms, please,” he said, watching the hangar doors open. Thankfully, everyone on the Black Lion other than him was in the cargo area, ready for him to deposit them on the main warship once it arrived. “We’ve got a decently large number of people on here, and need to keep discussions limited to what’s relevant if we want to keep things efficient.”

“…Well, who shoved a stick up _your_ a—”

“ _Naruto!_ ”

Shiro closed his eyes for a moment took a deep breath. “I was told that everyone we brought up from planet-side was an adult. I would _expect_ for you all to act as such in a situation like this.”

That managed to keep everyone quiet for a moment, save for a quiet snicker from Lance. Shiro just hoped he hadn’t offended too many people with that.

“Honestly, you’re lucky he hasn’t badgered anyone for information on what the invading species considers attractive.” Shikamaru’s voice came in over the comms.

“I’m fairly certain I don’t want to know,” Shiro said before anyone else could comment. “If you want to talk about that, there’s plenty of time _after_ the battle is over.”

“And who put you in charge?” Naruto demanded.

“The Princess did,” Shiro deadpanned, hoping Allura wouldn’t mind. “The princess that has made it at all possible to fight the Galra, by providing the castle ship, the lions, and the space suits you’re wearing. Now, as I said, enough chatter. They’re here.”

He could see the warship, and it _was_ coming in fast. He maneuvered the Black Lion over to the side of the Castle Ship closest to the Galra and opened the exit for just long enough for a single person to exit.

“I’m out,” Karin said, and her words were echoed by Sasuke, Killer Bee, and Naruto exiting from the other lions. The three men would be fighting without access to the lions or warships, which Shiro wasn’t going to question, while Karin was… oh wow.

That was certainly impressive.

“Aaaaaand now I understand what you meant by barrier technique,” Pidge said. They were probably itching to analyze the gold chains and the hazy teal force field that filled the gaps between them. “Is she on the inside? I’d like to avoid getting the chick that’s boosting our defenses shot by the Galra.”

“I’ll be fine,” Karin said, a certain strain to her words.

“I can make sure that at least some of the hits are blocked. Not everything, but the less strain that gets put on her, the longer the Adamantine Sealing Chains barrier will last. My sand can absorb at least some of the damage,” Gaara said quietly, and Shiro watched as the Yellow Lion disgorged some truly startling quantities of sand into space. It moved almost like it was alive, and Shiro shook his head a little to clear it.

Two seconds later, the Galra fired the first shots, and the battle began.

o.o.o.o.o

Shiro would not have said that he _enjoyed_ fighting with the shinobi at his side, but it certainly was easier in many ways.

At least a handful of fighters were incinerated whenever the giant, flaming fox creature and the skinless oxtopus (it was half ox, half octopus, he couldn’t _resist_ , at least in his own mind) let off one of those energy beams from their mouths.

The giant, translucent purple warrior was fairly interesting as well.

“What the hell are these things _made_ of?” Sasuke demanded at one point, when his giant, translucent purple sword didn’t do the level of damage that he expected.

“Do you want a rundown? Because that list is fucking _long._ ” Pidge said.

“Language!”

“You’re not my dad, Shiro!”

“Well, I got through,” Sakura commented, huffing a little from exertion. “Sasuke’s right, though, this stuff is _strong_. I had to punch it like five times to have any effect, and ripping the hole open wider is taking way more effort than it should.”

Shiro dutifully ignored that.

“The insides will be crafted of something softer and less expensive to produce,” Allura said, “But the outer hulls are incredibly durable due to the dangers of both space travel and battles. Too many holes and everyone inside dies from the lack of breathable air.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got our entrance,” Sakura muttered. “Going in now. Any suggestions on how far we need to get from the hole before switching to the half-face shield is an option?”

Coran took that question, while Shiro started giving orders to the other paladins.

“There’s another ship arriving,” Allura informed them. “It’s about the same size as the warship, but something seems off about it.”

Voices erupted across the comms as everyone turned their own on in an attempt to contribute to the argument, whatever it was. Shiro was having trouble following _any_ of it, until—

“HEY!”

 “…Karin-nee-chan?” Naruto asked, which was a little ridiculous, considering the fact that his current form’s mouth was in the process of tearing a Galra fighter jet to pieces.

“Don’t call me that,” Karin ordered, then continued with thinly-veiled irritation and worry. “The incoming ship has five people on it that have abnormally high levels of chakra for the species, at least from what I’ve sensed so far. That mean anything to you?”

Shiro tried to parse that for a second, and then paled. He swerved to avoid colliding with the ion cannon, and then activated his comm link. “Are you telling me they brought _the Druids?_ ”

“Do I look like I know what that means?” Karin demanded.

“Higher levels of quintessence for several individuals…” Coran muttered. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Karin ground out, followed by a hiss between teeth as the ion cannon slammed into her barrier. “Can someone take that thing out?”

“Hunk!” Shiro ordered. The fact that they had multiple barriers this time was nice, but it would be rude, at minimum, to keep taking advantage of the literal human shield for much longer than they had to.

“On it!”

Out of the corner of the Black Lion’s field of vision, he saw a Galra fighter zooming in towards Karin. He opened his mouth to call out a warning.

It died in his throat at about the same time that the Galra fighter did, ripped to shreds by a cloud of sand.

Okay. So. They could handle themselves.

o.o.o.o.o

“You’d almost think they’d never seen some spitting magma at them before,” Kurotsuchi commented blithely.

“Or steam,” Mei added, something in her voice coy and self-confident and once again mildly terrifying.

“Chatter,” Shiro said, not quite in the mood to listen unless it was relevant. “Do we have any update on the—”

“Destroy the other ship, now!”

“Karin?” Shikamaru asked. “The hell are you—”

“The stronger chakra signatures, they’re draining the planet!”

Silence suffused the comms for once.

“What?” Shikamaru asked after a moment, voice low.

“It’s not enough to be visible yet, but they’re draining the planet of chakra!”

_They’re draining the planet of quintessence._

Well, fuck.

“I can feel it too,” Naruto said after a moment. “It’s not enough to notice unless you’re really good at it, but it’s getting stronger. They’re draining me of _Kurama_ , okay.”

“Troublesome,” Shikamaru swore.

“Princess?” Shiro asked. “You think it’s time?”

“Form Voltron,” Allura ordered, not an inch of give in her voice. “Now.”

o.o.o.o.o

As it stood, Shiro thought it was a _very_ good thing that they’d brought along the shinobi, because Sasuke’s predictive eyes and Naruto’s ability to clone himself were doing plenty to keep the Druids busy as Voltron formed up. The two had gone back to their normal sizes, if still abnormally glowing and such, and moved on to fighting the Druids inside the second warship.

“That’s kind of like shunshin, right?” Naruto asked. “You copy that with your Sharingan, bastard?”

“Hell if I know, but I’m going to—oh, you spit lightning? Let me show you how a _master_ does it.”

“What the hell, bastard, you almost hit me!”

“Just almost? Damn.”

Enraged squawks of protest followed this.

“Please tell me we’re not that bad,” Lance said over the private channel.

“Sometimes,” Pidge cheerfully shot his hopes down. “You and Keith can get a bit annoying.”

“Thanks, you little gremlin.”

“Alright, enough. We’re going to hit the back of the ship first, so we can avoid the two we’ve got up in the front fighting the Druids. Hunk, form shoulder cannon!”

“Oh, yeah!”

“I’d like to take this moment to remind everyone that I’ve still got one of the ninjas in my cockpit,” Pidge said. “The plant guy.”

“We don’t care, Pidge,” Keith said. “If he hasn’t thrown up or started crying by now, then he won’t at all.”

“Was that a dig at me?” Hunk demanded, even as they shot the warship and drew out a small swarm of Galra fighters to attack them.

“No, it was a dig at one of the guys that I was stuck with earlier. The whole reason I stayed back instead of joining in on the strategy meeting was to… clean up.” Keith grunted as Voltron shot back, the inertial dampeners not _quite_ effective enough to keep the movement from yanking them about a little.

“That’s gross, dude,” Lance said.

“You’re not the one that had to do it,” Keith muttered.

“Keith, sword!” Shiro ordered. “And stay on task, guys.”

“Like I said: annoying!” Pidge said in a sing-song manner.

Shiro tried to focus on the information coming in from the more public channel as well, even as Voltron drew its sword and attacked the ship.

“So,” Sasuke said, “Do you need any of this _intact_ later?”

“We’d prefer to have something to examine if possible, so that we know what they’re doing, and how,” Allura said.

“That’s a no to Chibaku Tensei, then.”

“A _definite_ no, Sasuke,” Kakashi said. He followed it up with a comment that Shiro wasn’t sure was meant to have made it onto the comms, as it sounded like it had been said in an entirely different direction from the microphone. “Oh, nicely done, Kurenai. How many was that?”

“Sasuke!” Ino shouted. “Bring back one of the corpses for me!”

“…why?”

“Don’t be coy, you know why! Ugh, never mind, Naruto! Get me one of those corpses, and the head better be intact!”

“Okay, Ino-chan!”

Shiro focused back on the fight. There would be time to worry later.

o.o.o.o.o

The shinobi aboard the first warship did something to melt half of it, and cause the other half to explode.

The giant oxtopus probably had something to do with that.

o.o.o.o.o

The fight ended much as it always did, with Voltron doing something absolutely shiny, and a lot of people complaining about the collateral damage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention that I hate fight scenes? Because I really hate fight scenes. I want to get back to the interesting stuff, and that means literally anything other than fight scenes.


	3. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinobi, paladins, and aliens alike try to decide on a way forward. This is harder than it sounds.

“I would like to know why some of the fighters began attacking one another instead of us halfway through,” a member of the Blade of Marmora said as he filed in with everyone else, having been one of the few Galra on Voltron’s side to participate in this particular battle. It didn’t sound like a demand, but it was.

Kolivan pointed at Ino, who smiled and waved, and Kurenai, who did not.

“Mind-Body Disturbance Technique. Temporarily taking over the body from a distance and forcing them to attack their allies instead of us? _So_ useful.”

“I cast illusions that convinced some of them that the castle was in an entirely different position than it was,” Kurenai said. “They attacked the position they thought the castle occupied, which generally tended to be the same location that housed their own allies.”

“That’s kind of terrifying,” Lance whispered to Hunk. He probably thought he was being quiet, but Shiro would have bet a significant amount of money, if he still had any, that at least half the room had enhanced hearing and had heard. The smugness that entered Ino’s expression certainly indicated such.

Shiro wanted his headache to go away.

“Ino-chan!” Naruto yelled, dragging in a Druid’s body. “I brought you a present!”

Ino made a face, but didn’t comment. She’d outright asked for it, after all.

Shiro ignored the flurry of questions that erupted in that section of the room, especially after he heard the words ‘mind reading,’ in favor of paying attention to more shinobi and the rest of the paladins come in.

“Fucking goddamn piece of _shit_ ,” Karin hissed from behind him, and he glanced back to see that she had one hand rubbing at her solar plexus, visibly uncomfortable.

Sakura snorted, hands glowing green against Karin’s back. “Well, that’s what you get for playing support against _that_.”

“Fuck off,” was all the response she got.

“Not unless you want to deal with the strain the chains put on your chakra system yourself.”

“ _You_ try being the only thing standing in the way of a fucking _miniature bijuudama beam._ ”

“…no thanks, I think I’ll leave that to you.”

“That’s what I th—the fuck?”

Shiro almost thought they’d noticed him watching, but Karin’s eyes were focused on Keith.

Keith, of course, froze just inside the door. “What?”

Karin kept staring at him, confusion and mild irritation clear on her face. Slowly, the shinobi in the room tensed. No matter how little they seemed to like the woman, the blatant shift in mood from her end had left them uncomfortable and suspicious.

“So… what’s going on?” Lance asked, apparently not having heard the short exchange. “Why’s everyone quiet all of a sudden?”

Keith pointed at Karin.

Lance glanced from one to the other, then to Shiro. “Uh…”

“Maybe we should ask what’s going on, yes?” Allura said, though it wasn’t much of a request. “Miss… Uzumaki, was it? Why are you so concerned with Keith’s presence?”

Karin gave her a look that would have been disdainful if it weren’t so guarded. “I just… didn’t expect him to look so human.”

Shiro processed that for a moment, dread and disbelief dawning. “Come again?”

“His chakra’s only half human,” Karin said, waving a hand dismissively at Keith. “The other half is the same as the aliens we just fought, and them.”

She gestured at the Blade of Marmora, and Shiro felt like pinching the bridge of his nose, because this was not a complication he wanted in their lives.

“How the _hell_ did you figure that out so quickly?” Lance demanded, looking just as surprised as the other paladins. “You just… took one look at him and—?”

“I didn’t need a _look_ ,” Karin said, offended. Sakura, behind her, seemed to be holding in a laugh. “I’m the best damn sensor on the planet; if I couldn’t tell apart different _species_ by their chakra, I’d be shit at my job.”

“Let me just clarify,” Shiro said, before an argument could erupt. “You said you can sense… chakra? What we call quintessence?”

Karin nodded sharply. “Best sensor on the entire damn planet.”

None of the shinobi contested this, Shiro noticed. Some of them didn’t look _happy_ about the claim, but nobody tried to argue that she wasn’t, which meant that she was almost certainly telling the truth.

“And you could tell, based on energy that you sensed before you even saw him, that Keith wasn’t fully human?” Shiro asked.

“The lion’s chakra didn’t exactly do a great job of hiding it. I just assumed he stayed behind to keep people from panicking over the viability of interplanetary, cross-species reproduction as a concept.”

“I stayed behind to clean up the vomit,” Keith said, shooting a dirty look in the direction of the cluster of Kumo shinobi.

“…lovely,” Karin drawled, making a face. “Anyway, are you saying you’ve really not… had anyone figure it out before? What seems to be the problem?”

“Dude, even _Keith_ didn’t know he was part-Galra until a few months ago,” Lance said before anyone could stop him. “None of us did. So it’s kind of surprising that you just…figured it out before even _seeing_ him.”

“…that’s…” Karin made a face. “Flattering?”

“I think you mean pathetic,” Sasuke corrected.

“To be fair, he doesn’t even know what chakra is, and they don’t have sensors, and he looks totally human. It’s pretty easy to go through life not knowing shit about yourself if there aren’t _really_ obvious signs. Like, I didn’t know I was a jinchuuriki ‘til I was twelve,” Naruto said.

Sasuke blinked at him. “All I’m hearing here is that you are somehow even more pathetic than him.”

Kakashi wordlessly caught Naruto by the scruff of his jacket as he threw himself at Sasuke, shouting invectives. He looked up from the book in his other hand with a tired expression on the visible portion of his face. “Ignore them, please.”

“As interesting as all this is,” Allura said, voice raised to capture attention. “I would like to land on the planet’s surface sometime soon to let you all off, and speak directly with your leaders. I am aware that several are on board at the moment, but given what I’ve been told of your planet’s governmental system, I would prefer to speak to all major heads of state as soon as possible.”

“Okay, but after the party.”

Everyone turned to look at Naruto, who shrugged. “We just fought off a bunch of space aliens. We’re having a party.”

“I’ll help with planning as soon as this headache goes down,” Ino said, drawing attention again. She had two glowing hands pressed to the parts of the Druid’s head that might have been the temples on a human head. Even as everyone watched, the glow faded, and she took a step back, wobbling.

Hinata caught her by the shoulder, wordlessly offering support.

“Find anything interesting?” Kakashi asked. He then seemed to catch himself, and turned to Allura with a shallow bow that he immediately straightened from. “Princess, I believe we are all amenable to the plan to land. Given the number of Konoha shinobi here, and Naruto’s plans, I think it would be best to land near there for the time being, and then take care of transportation to the other villages afterwards.”

“I see no problem with this,” Gaara said.

The Raikage frowned deeply, but nodded. “It’ll do for now.”

“So, who wants to know what I got out of there?” Ino asked. “Also, Sakura? Can you come make sure I didn’t do anything weird to my head?”

Sakura hurried from Karin over to Ino. “What happened?”

“A complex mind with an entirely different brain structure from what I’m used to happened,” Ino groused. “I got some memories out of the mess, but it was painful. Same reason I stay away from summons.”

“You retrieved memories from the Druid?” Allura demanded. “What kind? How?”

“I told you, I’m a _Yamanaka_. Messing around with minds is our entire thing. Anyway, I tried to center the search around whatever the hell they were doing here,” Ino said, leaning back towards Sakura and her glowing hands. “It looks like they’ve been draining entire planets of chakra for some kind of… fuel cell, I guess? The stuff you call quintessence, they can extract it and make it into some kind of liquid to power things. An entire planet’s worth is only a couple hundred liters, it looks like, which they can sort of… compress. They need a couple Druids to get the whole thing done, but it’s an efficient process compared to what they had before. They get everything; animals, plants, the oceans and earth itself, _everything_. If it has chakra, quintessence, whatever? It’s gone. Gathered up and turned into some kind of fuel. They decided to do the distance-based draining process on us since we’re too dangerous to attack directly, but apparently have a much larger amount of chakra overall than most planets.”

“It’s true. The amount of quintessence your planet has is _ridiculous_ ,” Pidge confirmed.

“Blame Kaguya?” Shikamaru drawled, looking around the room.

“Nah, blame the tree,” Naruto said. He’d somehow ended up perched sitting on a console, kicking his legs back and forth. “Like, Kaguya helped, but this? This is all Shinju.”

“Blaming the tree it is.”

The shinobi all nodded like this somehow made sense. Shiro pretended it did, because he didn’t feel like dealing with their bullshit right now.

“Pidge, don’t,” he said, as soon as he saw them open their mouth to say something. “We can ask about that later.”

Pidge pouted, but didn’t argue. It was always a fifty-fifty chance on which way the whole thing would go, but they seemed willing to let the information-digging slide this time.

“Did you see anything regarding how many planets they have attempted this with?” Coran tried to drag them back on track.

“I don’t know… I mean, they seemed to have had practice? I caught at least three or four, but I get the feeling there might have been more. _But_ , it also feels like a pretty recent invention. The draining process, I mean.” Ino shrugged. “I’d guess under a dozen, but that they’ve been draining planets in some slower way for longer?”

“We’d been getting rumors regarding a superweapon,” Kolivan said. “I suppose this would fit what little information we’ve gathered.”

“Is there more than one ship set up to achieve this?” Allura asked.

Ino frowned, looking down at the Druid’s dead body. “I… don’t know. Maybe, but not many if there are. These… Druids? They don’t have a lot of them, and it looks you need at least four or five to do the entire process.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised. I’d like to be sure that there aren’t more, but at least now we know what to look for.” Allura didn’t seem happy about this information. “Thank you for sharing what you’ve found.”

“They just tried to destroy the planet, and you’re the closest thing to an organized resistance that there is. Imminent death to myself and everyone I love is a great motivator for sharing information that I have no reason to hide anyway,” Ino dismissed this.

“Ah, yes, the ‘because I’m one of the idiots who lives in it’ argument. Always a good choice,” Lance muttered, low enough that Shiro was fairly certain no one was supposed to hear except for Pidge and Hunk.

“GotG reference?” Hunk asked.

“Always.”

“We’ll be landing soon,” Coran called back from the main console. “Have any suggestions about where to put the castle ship down?”

Shiro watched as Kakashi meandered over to Coran and began giving directions to what seemed to be a large, barren training ground as a landing pad.

“Hey, Allura?” Hunk asked, catching her attention, and Shiro’s, though the shinobi looked more or less content to ignore them now. “I was wondering if we could pick up some stuff planetside?”

“Oh?” Allura was still focused on the controls, but obviously listening. “What do you need?”

“…I’m gonna be honest, here, I _really_ want to cook with ingredients I’m actually familiar with again.”

o.o.o.o.o

They postponed the debrief for several hours so people could get changed and rest up a little. Naruto offered to treat the paladins to lunch.

“I know the best ramen stand in the village, you’re gonna _love_ it,” he assured them, walking backwards with his hands in his pockets.

Shiro didn’t bother trying to doubt him. He and the other paladins were back in their casual clothing, which meant they were getting at least a few less looks than if they were still in their armor, but people still pointed and stared.

His arm was of particular interest. He couldn’t quite hide it, though, so he just looked straight ahead and pretended not to notice anything.

“It’s been a while since any of us have had human food,” Lance said, looking around. “And it might not be what I’d be getting at home, but whatever we get will definitely be better than more green space goo.”

Naruto made a face. “That’s sounds gross.”

“It is.”

“It’s healthy,” Shiro said, feeling an unnecessary urge to defend the goo. “And we’ve certainly had more variety since we started working with the Blade of Marmora.”

“But none of it’s _familiar_ ,” Hunk insisted. “And… listen, I can do a lot with the ingredients we get, but I think we all want a taste of home, and this may not be it _exactly_ , but it’s really close, and the closest we’re going to get in a while.”

“Not gonna argue that,” Shiro allowed.

“Anyway, this is Ichiraku Ramen,” Naruto said as they came to a stand. “Take a seat and order whatever you want. I’ve got a tab.”

Shiro realized the problem before anyone else. The second person was, unsurprisingly, Pidge, who had opted to take a look at the menu instead of bickering over seating like the boys.

“Dude, we can’t read this.”

Naruto blinked at them. “Eh?”

“We don’t actually know your language, except Shiro. We’ve got translation software that can take care of most of what we hear and say, but it doesn’t actually do anything for the written language,” Pidge gestured at the menu. “I can read multiple languages, but Japanese isn’t one of them. The menu’s incomprehensible to me and, I’m guessing, the idiots behind me.”

“Hey!” Hunk protested.

“Rude, Pidge.” Lance added on. “You’re not wrong that we can’t read it, but we’re not idiots. Especially Hunk! I thought you two were science buddies!”

Pidge blinked at them, then turned back to Shiro. “Anyway.”

“Pidge,” Shiro warned.

“Ugh, fine. Lance, Hunk, Keith, I’m sorry for calling you idiots. I was just annoyed by the bickering.” Pidge rolled their eyes and turned back to Shiro. They pointed at the menu. “Now can you tell us what’s on there?”

Shiro felt something in his chest clench. “Pidge, I haven’t had a reason or opportunity to read Japanese in almost three years. I might get things wrong.”

“I could suggest stuff?” Naruto offered. Shiro had almost forgotten he was there.

Naruto shrugged when they all turned to look at him. “I know the menu like the back of my hand. I can tell you the basics and you can ask me what’s what and stuff. I’ve been going here since I was a really little kid, and I’m friends with the owner and everything.”

“Works for me,” Hunk said. Everyone echoed his sentiments, and Naruto launched into a rambling explanation of what the standard ramen here was like, and what each of the variations meant. It was, perhaps, a bit more long-winded than Shiro would have liked to hear, but there wasn’t really any harm to hearing the man wax eloquent about his favorite food.

They ordered without trouble, and there wasn’t even a fight between anyone before the food arrived, just muttered conversations and Shiro trying to accustom himself to reading Japanese again.

Then the ramen arrived.

And they started eating.

And…

And…

And…

And Shiro didn’t want to admit that there was a tightness in his chest, in his throat, in the muscles just below his eyes. But every bite tasted like _home_ , in a way that nothing had in… in years, and he just… he couldn’t…

“Shiro?” Keith’s hand landed on his elbow, and Shiro looked up into worried eyes. “Are you okay? You’re crying.”

Oh. “Am I?” He asked, reaching up to touch his face and seeing his fingers come away glistening. “Ah. Sorry.”

“Uh, I know the ramen’s good,” Naruto said, laughing nervously with an expression on his face like a deer in the headlights, leaning away in obvious discomfort. “But that’s kind of… uh… what’s going on?”

“Nothing to worry about, it’s just… been a very long time since…” Shiro took a deep breath, grabbing a napkin and dabbing at his eyes. “It’s nothing important.”

“Homesickness,” Pidge said, voice dry and flat. “It’s been like six months for most of us since we had normal, human food. It’s been closer to two years for Shiro. Five months for Kerberos, about a year in the Arena, and now six months with Voltron.”

“It’s been two years since you had ramen?” Naruto asked, his voice a horrified whisper.

Shiro couldn’t tell if he was doing it in an attempt to lighten the mood or genuinely shocked, but he shook his head and treated the question seriously. “Closer to two and a half, since I’m not counting instant ramen. Maybe three. I didn’t go on leave more than twice a year, so I only ever really got actual, authentic Japanese food when I visited my grandparents in Japan, and I don’t know if I got ramen on the last one.”

Naruto stared at him in shock. “So… what _have_ you been eating for the last two years?”

“Astronaut food on the Kerberos mission, whatever goop I was given by the Galra, and now green space goo on the castle ship and whatever Hunk can make out of the ingredients we can get when we go planetside.” Shiro mustered up a grin. “Out of all of those, I’d say Hunk’s is definitely the best.”

Naruto turned to Hunk, seeming determined to do _something_. “You do most of the cooking?”

“Uh… yeah?” Hunk leaned back a little from the intensity in Naruto’s gaze. “Why?”

“I’m gonna introduce you to Chouji. His clan knows most of the best places to buy things in bulk, and I can talk to Tsunade-baa-chan about how we’re gonna do compensation for the help you’re giving us to fight those aliens and the science-y stuff you said you’d share. Plus, Chouji can probably get you some cookbooks, if you don’t know how to make the kind of food your friend has been missing. I don’t know if he can find them in a language you know, but there’s a good chance.”

Something in Naruto’s eyes was far, far too intense.

Shiro watched some of that intensity light up in Hunk’s eyes in turn. “…let’s do that.”

The situation likely would have progressed immediately from there if not for a massive explosion that caused the ground itself to shudder.

Shiro jumped to his feet immediately, heart jumping into overdrive as his mind started racing, searching for the cause. There was a large cloud of dust in the air a few miles out, and he turned towards it, arm activating almost unconsciously as he searched for the Galra presence that had—

“It’s not the aliens!” Naruto said, jumping in front of him. The younger man had to stand on his toes to be eyelevel with Shiro, but he managed it. “It’s just TenTen!”

Shiro blinked slowly, his mind clattering back down into something approaching order. He deactivated his arm and lowered it, deliberately forcing himself to relax. “What is a… TenTen?”

Naruto spun and looked at the dust explosion, eyes squinting as furiously searched for something. “Uh… that! That’s her!”

He was pointing at a triangular mass at the upper edge of the explosion. When Shiro focused, he saw a young woman on something very large and flat and grey, practically hovering near the top of the dust cloud.

“Oh, hey, she finally got those momentum retention seals working,” Naruto commented, tilting his head. “Or was it the gravity minimizers? I can’t remember what she was working on this week. I know there was something about inertia so the explosion didn’t kill her.”

The large, flat object disappeared somehow, in a puff of white smoke, and the woman was in free-fall.

“Is she going to be okay?” Pidge asked, audibly nervous. “She’s… going _really_ fast. She’s got to be like a mile up!”

“Yeah, probably,” Naruto said, bouncing on his toes. “But it shouldn’t be a big problem if Lee is spotting for her.”

“Probably?” Hunk asked.

“I mean… wouldn’t be her first time getting hurt in the search for more knowledge?” Naruto shrugged, though the embarrassment was clear on his face. “Anyway, she’s usually got a plan to—there!”

A hang-glider had appeared in a puff of white smoke, and the woman pulled out of her dive in a way that had Shiro wincing in sympathetic pain for the strain that her shoulders had to be undergoing. She ended up flying hundreds of feet up in the air, making lazy circles above the village. The dust from the explosion she’d used to launch herself into the air in the first place still hadn’t settled.

“TenTen’s cool,” Naruto told them with a grin. “But you should finish your ramen so we can go talk to Granny and the other Kage.”

o.o.o.o.o

Shiro ended up letting Allura, Kolivan, and Coran take the reins of the post-battle negotiations with the shinobi. He’d had to fly in two other military leaders from around the continent, and he recognized only one of them from the screens. The other, apparently a samurai, politely introduced himself as Mifune when Shiro stepped out to explain the lions.

Which led to him standing by the door along with various other not-quite-in-charge-but-still-important people who could probably kill him as soon as look at him outside the lion while Allura and the Kage and other important people “negotiated” about how many and which shinobi to send along with Voltron to fight the Galra for the long haul.

Negotiating, in this case, meant that the Kage argued with one another like children while Allura tried not to lose her temper, and Mifune looked old.

He seemed to be about as close to ‘functioning adult’ as anyone at that table got.

From what Shiro understood, which wasn’t everything, since there were plenty of references to battles and wars and people he’d never heard being flung about with a coy, pointed smugness between the shinobi, nobody wanted to risk weakening their military, or their economy, by sending out some of their strongest warriors with minimal chances of contact in case of emergency.

“We can provide a communicator,” Allura assured them.

“We’d have to trust your word that you’d actually take the call,” the short, old man from the area that more closely resembled the Badlands than any other ecosystem Shiro had experienced. Onoki was his name, if Shiro remembered correctly. “And forgive me for being a little concerned after what happened in with Kiri and Suna in Iyarashii Pass.”

“You _dare_ —” Mei started, the air around her already shining from the heat she was producing in her anger.

“Seventy years have passed,” Gaara said, “and—”

“And neither of you brats may have been alive back then, but I was, and you know how paranoid we old men can get after all these years of war, don’t you?” Onoki laughed harshly. “You call this a peace, and yet we all know that all it’s going to take is another snake or old warhawk to crawl from Konoha’s sewers to—”

“Do _not_ pin Danzo on me,” Tsunade said, voice low as she leaned over the table, eyes narrowed. “Or maybe I’ll show you just what a difference twenty years can make.”

“ _Ahem_ ,” Mifune coughed deliberately into his fist. “If we could return to the task at hand?”

Allura looked like she was ready to burst a blood vessel, but reigned in her frustrations as the discussions returned, however temporarily, to which shinobi might potentially be sent with Voltron to aid in the war on the Galra.

“Shiro, if you don’t mind me asking,” Coran said quietly, leaning in and clearly aware of the fact that everyone in the room would be eavesdropping. “Would this be going about as well if we were on your home planet? I don’t know what to ascribe to the culture, and what to the species.”

Shiro thought about it for a moment, and shrugged. “Less overt threats of violence, more subtle politicking, more people at once, and more people threatening to bomb us so we’ll leave the planet, I imagine. It would take about as long to choose an auxiliary force, though that would be more due to bureaucracy and less out of a desire to maintain a delicate balance of human nuclear deterrents, since most of our power comes from the weapons, rather than the people. Just as much… quarreling, though, if a little less open about it.”

He was getting dirty looks from all over the room. Oh well. Too late to fix things now.

“I see,” Coran said, frowning and rubbing pensively at his moustache.

Mifune caught everyone’s attention again with another cough. “If I might suggest calling the day’s discussion to a close? We can pick up again tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Tsunade said, standing. “If nobody’s got a problem with that, then… Shizune! Get them set up with hotel rooms!”

“Yes, Tsunade-sama!” The woman hurried forward a few steps, then waited for foreign shinobi and samurai to agree to call it a day, and then to follow her out.

Allura rubbed at her temples without caring that people would see.

Shiro approached her carefully, some of the pent-up tension in his shoulders draining now that there were no longer volatile killers arguing just in front of him. “Princess?”

“If that stubbornness is a species-wide trait, then many of the actions I’ve seen the paladins take these past months make much more sense,” she said darkly.

“I wouldn’t call that… a species-wide trait, or even pure stubbornness. It was more…” Shiro grappled for words that wouldn’t be insulting.

“Asinine obstinacy?” One of the remaining Konoha shinobi suggested.

Shiro looked up to see Shikamaru standing by the door with his hands in his pockets.

“I wouldn’t put it in those words,” Shiro said. “You didn’t leave with the rest?”

“Nah.” Shikamaru tilted his head back to look up and stare into the middle distance, frowning and pouting. “As annoying as all that was, Ino’s going to be worse. She’s got a party to manage, after all.”

Shiro made a face. “How large is this party expected to be?”

Shikamaru shrugged. “Don’t know yet, but the longer I stay in here, the less work I’ll have to do to get it up and running.”

Shiro supposed that was true.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If y'all have been following me for more than a month and haven't guessed what direction this story is going to take, then I'm _really_ sorry about what's going to be happening once I switch gears to build up into a plot.
> 
> Anyway, I'm really excited to write the party. It actually might have multiple chapters dedicated to it, because a lot of legitimately important shit happens during it. Also, we'll finally be switching POVs! Shiro is fun and all, but a party isn't really his element, now is it?


	4. The Party (Pt I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a party hosted by ninjas, and Lance gets his turn in the spotlight. Mostly.

“Seriously?” Lance asked, looking at the device in Coran’s hand. They were back on the castle ship, ostensibly to start preparing for the party. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t actually much to do, so Lance was laying back on a couch and cycling his legs in the air, making conversation with Coran and Hunk.

“Lance, I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that humans are more… omnivorous than most species.” Coran fiddled with something on the device. “I need to make sure that things are safe for myself and Allura before we go.”

“I did tell them to make sure there was a vegetarian option, since you guys are technically herbivores. Well, granivores, maybe? No meat or seafood, anyway.” Hunk was rifling through some papers off to the side, and sounded more than a little distracted. “I’m going to need to talk to someone about those… I think they called them stasis seals? Something they carve into containers to keep food fresh for longer. I want to figure out exactly how much food we can store on board from here, assuming we can trade for enough to fill up the space.”

Lance grinned, sitting up and tucking his hands behind his head. “Think we can get some chili?”

“I mean, probably?” Hunk frowned. “I remember at least one of the ramen options being spicy, right? So we can probably find something for that.”

“You’re looking for capsaicin?” Coran asked, disapproving.

“Always,” Lance said, putting a hand over his heart. He grinned at Coran. “You’re going to be amazed at how much I can eat.”

“Humans,” Coran said, shaking his head. “And do you plan to go in that clothing?”

Lance looked down, and then back up at Coran. He shrugged. “Nobody said there was going to be a dress code, so I think my usual outfit should be fine.”

“Same,” Hunk said, though he didn’t look up from his papers. Lance nonetheless appreciated the solidarity.

“Are the Marmora guys gonna have one of those?” Lance asked, pointing at the scanning device in Coran’s hands.

“Yes. To the best of my knowledge, only Kolivan is attending the festivities for sure, though he said he may bring an aide or two,” Coran said, pressing another button or two. “It will certainly be interesting to see such a wide variety of humans in this kind of environment. Five paladins isn’t exactly a representative sample size, you know!”

“Well, these guys aren’t going to be exactly like the humans from _our_ planet would be, since they basically all have superpowers,” Hunk said. “But you’ll probably learn something anyway?”

“Think I’ll find someone cute?” Lance asked, sitting up. “Finally around humans again, so I might have more luck.”

Hunk shrugged. “Who knows, dude? You never know what the cultural norms are. What if finger guns are considered a massive insult and you get us all kicked off the planet by accident?”

“…thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy.”

“I’m just saying! They may be mostly human and have some pretty Japanese cultural norms, but there’s still a lot of weird stuff going on that make it obvious that we can’t really be sure about anything.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lance promised.

“And remember to use protection!”

“Hunk! Why?” Lance buried his face in his hands. “Oh my god, Hunk, no. I’m not going to lose my virginity to a stranger on a ninja planet. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

Hunk shrugged. “You never know, Lance.”

Coran coughed, clearing his throat. “Perhaps you could have this conversation elsewhere?”

Lance considered that. “Would you rather see if we can actually find something interesting for me to wear, since you think this is too drab?”

“Hm…” Coran stroked his moustache, considering. “I’m sure we could find something that would fit your human styles.”

Lance hopped to his feet. “Sweetness! Let’s go, man!”

o.o.o.o.o

Lance did not end up wearing Altean clothing to the party. Coran was more disappointed than Lance was.

o.o.o.o.o

“And we’re hanging out on the fringes because…” Lance trailed off encouragingly, gesturing for Pidge and Hunk to complete the sentence for him.

“I hate crowds. Hunk is nervous about this many ninjas. You’re being a good friend and keeping us company,” Pidge rattled off, craning their head a little to get a better view of the large, flat expanse of dirt that had been commandeered for the party. They were sitting on top of a picnic table, with Hunk on one of the actual benches, and Lance standing next to them, hand on hip and drink in hand.

“You can go mingle if you want, Lance,” Hunk said, poking him in the side, right where he knew Lance was ticklish. Lance yelped and flinched away, rubbing at the spot and pouting at his best friend. Hunk just smiled. “Seriously, Pidge and I can keep each other company.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like mingling alone. It just makes me look sad. I don’t want to look sad, Hunk.” Lance leaned over dramatically, hand splayed against his chest.

 “So go hang out at the bar,” Pidge said, rolling their eyes. “They might even actually give you alcohol.”

Lance made a face. “Uh, don’t know how to tell you this, buddy, but I am _not_ a fan of drinking.”

Pidge blinked and tilted their head. “Seriously? At the Garrison, you always… seemed the type, I guess?”

“Nah, it tastes terrible,” Lance said, shaking his head. “If I got invited to a party that _did_ have beer or something, I usually made up some excuse so I could just stick with soda or something.”

“Huh,” Pidge said, leaning back onto arms with locked elbows, staring at the sky. “Okay. That’s not what I expected.”

“I am a man of many facets,” Lance said, bowing deeply in their direction. “Feel free to be in awe.”

“Pffft, right.” Pidge laughed. “Go make friends, man of many facets.”

“As you wish,” Lance said, bowing again as he backed away, then stood straight with a flourish and turned, waving. “Wish me luck!”

He could hear Pidge talking behind him as he left. “There’s like a thirty percent chance that he’s going to die.”

“Stop quoting old mockumentaries, Pidge,” Hunk sighed.

Lance couldn’t even feel insulted, honestly. A meme or quote was always worth it.

He did, in fact, make his way over to the hastily set-up bar that the ninjas had set up earlier. He knew they’d have non-alcoholic options, if only because Allura had made it clear that she’d need some concessions made for the non-human digestive systems that she and the other aliens had, and ethanol was much more poisonous to Alteans and Galra than it was to humans.

(This might have explained Keith’s surprisingly low tolerance for high-ABV drinks, in Lance’s opinion.)

“Do you guys do virgin Piña Coladas?” Lance asked, then smiled and nodded when he got an affirmative. “One of those, then.”

He accepted his (free!) drink with a thank you, then turned to survey the nearby area. Most of the people here were closer to Shiro’s age than Lance’s own. He got the feeling that while _he_ didn’t feel gross about flirting with them, they’d probably be uncomfortable, at best, with being hit on by someone at least five or six years younger than them. Which was fair, really; viewed objectively, Lance knew that he would be viewed as a victim if a relationship with those ages ever actually went anywhere. Almost seventeen and twenty-two-or-three was kind of pushing it.

There were, however, a handful of people closer to his own age milling about. One was a girl with the same pale eyes as one of Konoha’s loaned shinobi, looking almost blind if not for the fact that her eyes actually did track everything perfectly. Long, straight, dark hair fell around a pretty face that looked maybe a year older than him, if that.

Much less awkward for all involved parties, at least going by age.

“Hi,” he said, sliding up to her with a smile. “The name’s Lance.”

She looked him up and down, disinterest shading towards something less pleasant, and Lance tried not to let his smile drop. Girls usually laughed by this point, if only because he made a point of coming across as non-threatening, so they could laugh him off without feeling weird. The last time he’d flirted and actually gotten a negative reaction was Allura, and even that hadn’t happened in months.

“Hanabi,” she finally said. “Am I supposed to know who you are? You look a little too civilian for this.”

“I’m one of the paladins,” Lance told her cheerily. She blinked at him, expression not shifting. He tried again, “I pilot one of the giant robot lions?”

“Ah,” she said, leaving it at that. She took a sip of her drink and asked, “And you came to speak with me because…?”

“Well, it’s not like there are a whole lot of people our age here, and,” Here he gave her another hopefully-charming grin, “I like making new friends.”

“You seemed to be flirting.”

“Well, you _are_ a very pretty woman, and you look like one of the people who went to fight the Galra ships, so I thought you might already know who we are,” Lance tried. “Figured I might as well give it a shot?”

“I see.” Hanabi nodded, seeming to contemplate that.

Then she dumped her drink on his head and walked away.

Lance gaped, not quite registering the fact that, out of the entire crowd, only one person was laughing, though that one person seemed to be nearing hysterics.

“…what just happened?”

o.o.o.o.o

Hunk clapped a hand over his mouth. “Oh _man_.”

Pidge snapped a photo with their phone. “I haven’t actually seen him strike out _this_ bad before. Have you?”

“Lance tries _really_ hard not to insult people or make them feel pressured when he flirts. I guess he might have tripped over some cultural difference?”

“Maybe,” Pidge said, dubious. They snapped another photo.

o.o.o.o.o

“Oh, quiznak,” Shiro whispered under his breath. He’d been keeping an eye on the younger paladins, and while Keith was content to stay near Shiro, and Pidge and Hunk were clinging to the edges at the moment, Lance had decided to mingle, and poorly.

He was standing at the makeshift bar, gaping as some kind of smoothie or other frozen drink dripped from his hair.

“What are you—oh.” Naruto winced sympathetically. “Ah, he tried to talk to Hanabi-chan, didn’t he?”

“If he offended someone, I’ll make sure he—” Allura started to say, already trying to do damage control, but Naruto shook his head, waving the words away.

“No, no, this is just Hanabi being… Hanabi.” He craned his head, evidently looking for someone in the crowd. “I’ll tell Hinata-chan what happened; she can handle her little sister.”

“But Lance…” Keith started, looking back and forth from Naruto to the paladin in question.

“Hey, if he’d insulted Hanabi or been too forward or something, she’d have gone all ‘Hyuuga Prodigy’ on his ass,” Naruto assured him. “Trust me, your friend probably did nothing wrong except choose the wrong person to approach.”

Shiro looked back and forth from Lance to Naruto again. It looked like someone was offering to help Lance clean up, so… Shiro was just going to ignore everything. If Lance was hurt by this incident, they could handle it later. “I’ll take your word for it.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Oh _man_ , I haven’t seen Hanabi turn someone down that fast in ages,” a laughing voice came up behind Lance, a hand slapping down onto his shoulder as the person in question struggled to maintain their balance while cackling. “Let me guess, you tried to flirt?”

Lance turned to the guy and nodded slowly. “I… yes, but I don’t _think_ I insulted her? I…”

“Nah, dude, she’d have used Gentle Fist on your ass _so hard_ if you’d actually insulted her. Like, complete paralysis in at least one limb. Possibly multiple limbs, with extreme pain, depending on how rude you were.” The guy grabbed a napkin and started wiping off some of the cold drink that had started to make its way down Lance’s face. “Dumping her drink on your head is… it’s her way of pissing off potential suitors to the point where they stop trying without opening herself up to the legal repercussions of actually hurting them physically.”

“Suitors?” Lance asked incredulously. “I wasn’t… what?”

“You just wanted to talk with a pretty girl, right?” The guy asked, continuing to try to wipe off the sugary, icy drink from Lance’s head. “Did you brag about any kind of position you hold or something?”

“She asked if she was supposed to know who I was, and I told her I pilot one of the lions.” Lance tried to stick to the facts, because he had a feeling he wouldn’t understand _anything_ if he tried to talk his way out. “She asked if I was trying to flirt, and I told her that she was very pretty and kind of looked like someone that had been on the ninja team to fight the Galra, so I thought she might already know who I am, and that I like making new friends.”

“…yeah, okay, she probably thought you were angling for a political marriage,” helpful ninja guy said, sighing. “Which seems like a leap in logic, but she gets a _lot_ of people trying to flirt their way into that sort of thing, since she’s the current top choice for next Head of the Hyuuga Clan. She probably thought you fit the pattern enough that it was safer to get rid of you than to risk accidentally getting into another ‘situation.’”

Lance laughed a little, and he was aware that he probably sounded as confused as he felt. “I don’t think I’ve had a girl react that badly since… I don’t even know. Allura and Nyma don’t count, I think.”

“Allura… the princess you came with?”

“She grabbed my ears and called them hideous, then put me in an arm lock and demanded to know who I was,” Lance admitted. “And I’m saying it doesn’t count because she’d just woken up from cryo with her most recent memories being of an on-going battle, so…”

“Yeah, I’d say those are some extenuating circumstances.” The helpful ninja had moved on to trying to get the stains out of the fabric of Lance’s jacket. “I have no idea who the second one is.”

“Nyma flirted for long enough to handcuff me to a tree and steal my lion,” Lance said, utterly shameless. “In my defense, Hunk was the only one that _wasn’t_ fooled by her and her friends, and she was really, really cute.”

“Sounds like she’d have made a good kunoichi,” helpful ninja said, moving back and eyeing Lance. He held out a hand to shake. “I’m Sarutobi Konohamaru. You?”

“Lance Alvarez,” Lance said, shaking Konohamaru’s hand. “I’m gonna go ahead and ask which of those is the family name and which is the personal, because the translator tech keeps getting confused.”

“Sarutobi’s the clan name. I’m Konohamaru. As for you… Lance is the personal name?” Konohamaru grinned when Lance nodded. “Awesome. Hey, listen, do you want me to show you where the bathroom is so you can wash off a little? Your hair is still kind of, uh…”

Lance wished he could say that he was fine, but… “That would be awesome, actually.”

“Don’t worry too much about this, my dude,” Konohamaru said, slapping a hand down on Lance’s shoulder. “We’ve all seen weirder shit. Trust me, a dumped drink is nothing compared to what some people do.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Hey, did you notice anyone other than me laughing?”

o.o.o.o.o

Konohamaru was a nice person, Lance decided, after having gotten cleaned up a little with help from the guy. At least one ninja technique had gone into helping clean up his clothes, and that had definitely been interesting to watch.

“Wait, so _nobody_ can use chakra on your planet?” Konohamaru asked as they walked back to the bar. “Like, chakra doesn’t exist, or what?”

“Uh… I think the redhead with the glasses said that Keith’s, uh, ‘chakra’ was a perfect mix between human and Galra, so my guess is that it’s _there_ , just… not something we can use. Or it’s in really small amounts. Or both.”

“Huh,” Konohamaru said, hopping up onto a barstool and gesturing for the woman playing bartender to bring something over. After giving their orders, he turned back to Lance. “So, like, how do you guys fight, then? Because, and don’t take this the wrong way, you don’t really have the muscle mass for a taijutsu specialist.”

“I have no idea whether to be offended, since I don’t actually know what that means,” Lance told him. “What’s taijutsu?”

“Um… hm. Hand-to-hand, I guess? All fighting techniques that involve direct body contact, but no weapons and minimal chakra other than strength enhancement.”

“So… martial arts stuff. Yeah, no, I’m not…” Lance shook his head. “I’m not all that good at that. Shiro’s the best of us, and Keith’s pretty good, but I’m not exactly a close combat person.”

“Yeah? What do you do, then?” Konohamaru asked the question like he was actually interested, which, hey, _Lance_ wasn’t complaining about the attention.

“Other than piloting the Blue Lion? I’m kind of the sharpshooter. Like, I’m not perfect, but I’m good enough to be long-range support and sometimes sniper shots.”

“Like assassinations?”

Lance shuddered. “No, no, no, just… just drones and… we don’t really… I couldn’t…”

“Sorry,” Konohamaru said, lifting his hands. “Don’t have to talk about that. So, sharpshooting. What kind of weapon do you use, then? You guys seem to be more technologically advanced, so I’m guessing it’s not just aim and throw?”

“Oh, god, no, my overhand sucks.” Lance made a face, though he was grateful to be back on a subject that didn’t necessarily delve into the fact that Lance had been directly responsible for more deaths than he liked to admit. “No, I have a… there’s this Altean thing called a bayard that the paladins get, and it changes shape to suit the person using it. I get this pretty nice laser rifle, so most of my shooting is done with that… or using Blue.”

“The lion robot, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m going to go on record here and say that I have no idea what a laser rifle is.”

Lance blinked at that, and then laughed a little. “I mean, we _are_ supposed to carry our bayards with us at all times outside of the castle, even if we’re not in uniform.”

Konohamaru caught on to his meaning immediately. “Well, we are in a training ground.”

“It’s not that dark out yet, either.”

“I’d love to see the kind of skill that’s supposed to be protecting the universe.”

“I’m always willing to show off for a fan.”

Konohamaru throws his head back and laughs. “Oh man, you are _fun_.”

“Yeah? You think?”

“Sure,” the man shrugged. “You fight _aliens_ , and you’re funny, and I’m pretty sure you’re not just talking out of your ass when it comes to your aim.”

Lance smiled. “Thank you.”

“ _And_ you’re pretty,” Konohamaru added, grinning when Lance choked on his drink. “What, don’t tell me you don’t get that all the time?”

“I mean,” Lance coughed a little, and wiped his mouth on a napkin. At least none of it had gotten on his shirt this time. “Aliens. Different standards of beauty. That sort of thing.”

“The princess chick looked pretty close to human, though.”

“She thinks our ears are hideous,” Lance said, like it physically pained him. “Our _ears_.”

“Right, you mentioned that.” Konohamaru seemed to think it over, then shrugged. “Well, I’d say they’re all missing out, then. You’re a bit skinny, sure—”

“Ow,” Lance said, splaying a hand to his chest and leaning back in mock offense.

“—but I’d definitely give you… an eight and a half, maybe a nine?”

“Not a ten?”

“Still too skinny,” Konohamaru lamented, shaking his head and raising his drink. “Sorry, but I was raised a shinobi. Put on some muscles and maybe we can get you that full score.”

“Is that supposed to be a challenge, or…?”

“Why don’t you de—”

“KONOHAMARU-NII!”

Lance watched with mild bemusement as a small child slammed into Konohamaru. The bemusement came from the fact that the child had, in fact, jumped several feet higher into the air to reach the man than Lance knew to expect from small children.

“Hey, Mirai-chan.” Konohamaru patted the child on the head, readjusting so he could actually seat the tiny human in his lap. “Mirai, say hi to the nice man your Nii-chan’s been talking to.”

“Eh?” The child turned around. “Um… hi?”

“This is Sarutobi Mirai,” Konohamaru said, adjusting his position again. “She’s my little cousin. Which reminds me, where’s your mom?”

“Talkin’ to Gai-sensei,” she said, swinging her legs back and forth. “Hey, mister, you look like a civilian.”

“Well, I’m not a ninja, but I’m not really a civilian either,” Lance said. “I’m a Voltron paladin.”

The little girl looked blankly at him.

“Mirai-chan, did you see the big robot lions in the sky earlier?” Konohamaru asked. “There’s a person in charge of each one, and he’s the one in charge of the blue one.”

Mirai’s mouth dropped open. “Really?”

“Really, truly,” Lance said, nodding. “Does this look like the face of someone who’d lie to you?”

She appeared to be giving it some genuine thought. “…nope! You’re too civilian to lie right!”

Lance gaped for a moment, then started laughing as Konohamaru grumbled something about manners. “I forgot how much fun little kids are.”

“I’m not little!”

“Nah, you’re shorter than Pidge, which makes you little.” Lance reached out and ruffled Mirai’s hair. “But hey, short people are usually the most dangerous. You wanna know why?”

“Why?” She asked, looking suspicious.

Lance leaned in to whisper. “Because you’re closer to hell.”

Mirai clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Even Konohamaru snorted as Lance sat back up. “And hey, if you stay short forever, people will underestimate you, and since I’m guessing you’re gonna be a ninja, that’s gonna be a good thing, right?”

“But if I get tall, then I’ll have a longer reach!”

“Well, that’s a cost-benefit analysis that you’re going to have to run yourself,” Lance sighed, shaking his head. “Or just let happen. Can’t really control how tall you get, right?”

“Yeah…” Mirai said, kicking her legs back and forth again. “But I wanna get as tall as my dad.”

“And how tall is your dad?” Lance asked, belatedly noticing Konohamaru’s flinch.

“Kaa-chan says he was even taller than Gai and Kakashi!” Mirai said, seeming excited. “Almost as tall as Ibiki-san!”

“My uncle was a little over a hundred and ninety centimeters before he died,” Konohamaru said, and Lance tried to keep his discomfort from showing. He hadn’t meant to tread on _that_.

“I’m probably gonna be taller than my mom!” Mirai said proudly, missing out on the awkwardness.

“Which reminds me,” Konohamaru stood up, spinning Mirai in a circle and making her squeal in delight. “I need to get you back to your mom now!”

“Aw, but I like talking to the lion guy!”

“And I like talking to you too,” Lance assured her, getting to his feet as well. “But if your cousin says that your mom is looking for you, then we should probably get you to her.”

“Fiiiiine.” Mirai pouted as Konohamaru lifted her up to sit on his shoulders.

Those were some nice shoulders, actually. Lance kind of wanted to feel them out. Yum.

“So, kiddo, are you in school yet?” Lance asked, because hey, if there was a kid nearby, he wasn’t going to be the one making them feel unwelcome.

“Yeah! I just started a few weeks ago, and I’m doing really well!” Mirai kept chattering about her classes as they wove their way through the crowd. Lance nodded and commented in all the right spots, and it was only a few minutes before they found the girl’s mom.

The woman was… actually, Lance had already met her. Mirai’s mother was the woman who did illusions, the one who’d stayed aboard the castle and made the Galra fighter ships crash into each other.

“Mirai!” She darted forward, grabbing the girl and hefting her off of Konohamaru’s shoulders and onto the ground. “Don’t wander off like that!”

“Kaa-chan, I’m fine! I found Kono-nii-chan!” Mirai protested. “And his new friend!”

Lance nodded a little awkwardly as red eyes found his. The woman, Kurenai? Kurenai quirked an eyebrow, but didn’t seem to find anything strange about this. “Konohamaru, thank you for bringing her back.”

“No problem, Kurenai-ba-chan!” Konohamaru linked his hands behind his head. “By the way, have you seen TenTen around? I want to ask her for a favor real quick.”

Kurenai turned to look down at the man she’d been conversing with. “Gai?”

“I believe she was keeping Lee company near the music station,” Gai said, tapping a finger against his chin. “She wanted to make sure he didn’t accidentally consume alcohol again.”

Kurenai visibly winced. “Right. I remember last time.”

“Awesome, thanks.” Konohamaru gave them a jaunty salute of sorts. “Gai, need me to wheel you anywhere, or are you good here?”

After getting an answer in the negative and saying goodbye to Mirai, Konohamaru pulled Lance along behind him towards the DJ stand.

“Hey, so when I asked about your uncle…” Lance started, but Konohamaru cut him off.

“Don’t worry about it. You had no way of knowing.” Konohamaru waved the apology off. “Now, uh, has anyone introduced you to TenTen yet?”

“The name sounds a little familiar?” Lance tried to run through the people he’d met today. “I’ve gotten a lot of names shoved my way all at once, though, so I’m not sure.”

“She was the one behind the giant training ground explosion a few hours ago,” Konohamaru told him.

“…oh.” Lance wasn’t sure what else to say. “It was an impressive explosion?”

“Yeah, TenTen’s fun.” Konohamaru grinned widely, clearly enjoying talking about this woman. “She’s a weapons master, actually, which is why I want to find her. If she’s got Lee with her, then all the better, because then we can get a bunch of long-distance, possibly moving targets so you can show me your stuff.”

“Wait, what?” Lance pulled up short, and Konohamaru turned around, confusion on his face.

“I mean, unless you don’t want to? I know we were joking around, but I figured it would be interesting to see your weaponry in action.” Konohamaru stared at him, seemingly concerned. “I mean… _is_ it okay?”

“Y-yeah, it’s fine.” Lance shrugged it off, or tried to, anyway. Time to misdirect. “I’m just not super used to some of the stuff you guys have here. Like… the moving targets thing isn’t really achievable with the technology I’ve seen so far, so what’s up with that?”

Konohamaru gave him a look that clearly said _I call bullshit_ , but thankfully didn’t actually call him out on his bullshit. “Well, that’s where fuuinjutsu comes in.”

“Fuuin-what now?”

“TenTen!” Konohamaru called, waving a hand to get the attention of a woman with two heavily braided buns and the man next to her, both near the DJ stand. “Wanna see the space people’s sniper in action?”

The woman’s eyes landed on Lance, and he felt the sudden, inescapable urge to hide from the calculation in her gaze.

TenTen smiled. “Sure!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finding the right way to interpret Hanabi for that was hard, but the suitor thing is something that I decided was probably a fairly genuine worry? Like, any guy her age with anything approaching a political connection is automatically assumed to be looking for a political marriage. Lance just didn't know, the poor sod, and Konohamaru's seen this too many times to be concerned anymore.
> 
> Playlist for the party (just hit shuffle after J-Lo's "Let's Get Loud," since that's the last plot-relevant song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wINQ4ywd3U&list=PLwLMOOiOE5vwoQ_33AsEqtB_D5P3kXWoB&index=1  
> Obviously, these aren't the versions of the songs that Pidge is using, because music videos often include a lot of unnecessary footage, but it's a decent version of the overall thing.


	5. The Party (Pt II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People keep partying and my wordcount is excessively padded by an inability to keep things succinct when music is involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't judge me.
> 
> Playlist for the party (just hit shuffle after J-Lo's "Let's Get Loud," since that's the last plot-relevant song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wINQ4ywd3U&list=PLwLMOOiOE5vwoQ_33AsEqtB_D5P3kXWoB&index=1  
> Obviously, these aren't the versions of the songs that Pidge is using, because music videos often include a lot of unnecessary footage, but it's a decent version of the overall thing.

“Okay, so these,” TenTen said, pointing at some painted pieces on the targets that she’d taken out of some scroll at the emptier end of the training, “are gravity-minimizers. They don’t cancel out the effect of gravity completely, but they do make it have less of an effect.”

Lance nodded. “I think I’m following along so far.”

“Lee’s going to be tossing them around in arcs for us,” TenTen continued, “And once you hit one, the seal is canceled out and it falls to the ground.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll go first,” she said as she unsealed the last of the targets, and nodded at Lee. “So you can see.”

“Fine by me,” Lance said, stepping back.

Konohamaru slung an arm around Lance’s shoulders and smiled. “TenTen’s got some of the best aim in the village, so this is going to be impressive.”

“Just some?”

“Well, there’s a lot of possible weapons. She’s the best in some, second or third in others.” Konohamaru shrugged. “Overall, though, she’s known as a weapons master for a _reason,_ y’know?”

“Sounds more like Keith’s thing than mine,” Lance admitted. “He’s more in line with the sharp and pointy stuff than I am.”

“Everyone’s got a thing, though. Just gotta know what it is and how to make the best use of it.” Konohamaru nudged him. “Now watch, civvie.”

“Civvie?”

“I mean, by our standards, yeah. You don’t have shinobi training, and you’re not a samurai or a chakra-trained mercenary, so you’re a civilian.”

“Defender of the Universe!” Lance protested.

“That too,” Konohamaru conceded. “Seriously, though. Watch.”

So Lance watched.

Lee sprinted around TenTen in a circle that was nearly a fifty yards wide, tossing the targets into the air in wide arcs with no rhyme or reason that Lance could see, other than that the landing would be at another point on the circle, whether at fifteen degrees from the launch point or a full one-eighty.

TenTen crouched down, holding her arms out at her sides, a scroll in each hand. Her eyes were closed as she set them down vertically on the ground.

“Oh, man, she’s going to do the Twin Rising Dragons,” Konohamaru said, sounding gleeful.

“The what?”

“Just… just watch.” Konohamaru shifted excitedly on his toes. “I think she’s going to go with the original version, since it gives her more accuracy.”

Lance had no idea what that meant, but figured he’d see soon enough.

He did.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he whispered, watching with wide eyes as TenTen grabbed the weapons that popped out of the scrolls whirling around her body and flung them towards the targets around her.

Each one hit its mark.

“She’s sacrificing speed for accuracy here,” Konohamaru remarked. “She has a version where she doesn’t even need to touch them, just… gesture, and they go. It means she can send entire batches at once, but not with the same accuracy as when she does it by hand like this.”

“Is that as terrifying as it sounds?”

“Worse, ‘cause some of those explode.”

Lance nodded slowly. “You people scare me.”

“It’s okay,” Konohamaru said, patting his shoulder without looking over. “We scare each other, too.”

TenTen seemed to finally run out of weapons, going by how she stopped throwing and dropped to the ground in another crouch, rolling up her scrolls.

Lee zoomed around the field, grabbing the last few falling targets, and joined Konohamaru and Lance with a massive pile. It took TenTen a mite longer.

Lance clapped politely. “That was amazing.”

TenTen grinned and bowed theatrically. “Always fun to show off.”

“I kind of want to ask how the storage works,” Lance started, “But the explanation would probably include some kind of pocket dimension or subspace or something, and that’s really more Coran and Pidge and Hunk’s thing. Also Slav’s, but he’s up in the Castle, and a little too twitchy to talk to, usually.”

“Twitchy?” TenTen asked, by now in the middle of methodically removing and resealing the weapons. Lance watched her hands and marveled a little at the fact that she hadn’t accidentally nicked herself, given that she wasn’t even looking at what she was doing.

“Really intense Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?” Lance tried to explain. “We think it was exacerbated by the torture he underwent while captive, so… you know. Kind of hard to deal with if you haven’t interacted with him before. Kind of hard even if you have, but at least by that point you usually have an idea of what the rules for his space are.”

“But he’s the one who’d understand the seals?”

“He’s a genius with bending time and space around itself, so yeah.” Lance shrugged. “Again, though, I’m not really one of the science-y guys, so I’m not super sure I’d be able to understand if you tried to explain… _that_ to me.”

He gestured at the scroll in TenTen’s lap.

“It’s fine. Most shinobi don’t get it either, unless they decide to study Fuuinjutsu,” TenTen said, standing up. There were still weapons left lying around, but less than before. “So. You’re a sharpshooter?”

Lance opened his mouth, considered, and then closed it, nodding.

“That didn’t look very sure to me,” TenTen said, leaning to the side and putting some of her weight on—oh hey, Lee was there. Huh. He hadn’t been there a second ago.

“I’m kind of wondering what you consider a sharpshooter, compared to us, given the display just now,” Lance admitted. “That was just… not what I’m used to.”

“How so?”

“I do, like… long distance targeting, I guess? I can do close up stuff with some speed and plenty of accuracy, but not the way you do. I’m really better at stuff that’s really far away with some time to make sure the aim is perfect.” Lance shifted nervously. “Kinda seems a bit underwhelming now that I’ve seen what you can do.”

“How old are you?” TenTen asked.

“Uh… I’ll be seventeen in a few weeks.”

“And how long have you been training your aim?”

Lance bit his lip thinking. “Three or so years? I’ve only had the bayard for like… six months, though.”

TenTen snorted, shaking her head. “Kid, I’ve been training my aim longer than you’ve been _alive_. Being worse than me isn’t something to be ashamed of.”

“Nah, it’s natural.” Konohamaru said with a grin of his own. “Now, how about _you_ show off?”

“Yeah, what I got from that is that you prefer sniper work to close-range fire.” TenTen tapped her lip. “Which is pretty good, actually; unless you’re a very well-trained ninja, your aim is going to be shit in a firefight. Sniper work is actually more useful in the long run, if you can keep your head in the middle of a battle.”

Lance thought back to the few times he’d seen Keith pick up a blaster, and decided that maybe she had a point.

“Anyway, that means I know what to do to gauge your skills now.” TenTen clapped her hands together. “Lee? Training plan eight. Take it to…one-fifty.”

Lance’s eyes widened as Lee picked up a shorter stack of targets and raced out to maybe a hundred and fifty yards, then started juggling them. Each target went up to a dozen or more yards, and then fell back to Earth at the normal speed.

“I turned the gravity seals off,” TenTen told him. “Now, show me what you got.”

Lance glanced nervously out at the flying targets, then reached back and let his bayard materialize from the attachment at his belt. He could see TenTen and Konohamaru’s eyes on the smooth white and blue plastic-metal, curious, and then activated it.

The laser rifle landed heavily in his hands, and he glanced nervously at the ninjas.

TenTen raised one eyebrow and gestured for him to go ahead.

Lance turned back to the targets and raised the rifle.

The target was moving, so he had to aim for where it _would_ be, not where it was. Just like on the mermaid planet. Right.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

_Pull the trigger._

It hit the target, but not quite on the bullseye. Halfway between the center and the edge, really.

“Huh,” TenTen said, nothing in her voice giving away her opinion.

Lance grit his teeth and forced his focus to zero in on the targets that were still going through the air.

In.

Out.

 _Shoot_.

“Bullseye,” TenTen said.

Lance grinned, and then tried to go for another.

He got another bullseye.

The next one was off to the side again, but at least he hit the target.

And then he saw it. Three targets on their way up, just about to cross, and—

And he’d only gotten the Deadpool trick shot twice, but he could see it coming together in front of him, could see the three targets lining up _perfectly_ if he just moved a smidgen…

Lance dropped to one knee, leaned to the side, and waited for the right moment.

Boom.

He lowered the rifle just in time to see all three targets fall back down, singed-straight lazer holes through their centers.

“…triple bullseye. Okay.”

Lance turned to the ninjas and smiled. “So?”

“ _That_ ,” Konohamaru said, coming closer and holding out a fist. “Was fucking impressive, my dude.”

Lance returned the fist bump, smile widening into a proper grin. “I’ve only made that triple shot a few times. It’s a rush, though.”

“I can imagine.” TenTen came closer, fingers tapping against her upper arm. “You’re a good shot. I’d advise you to work on your speed a bit for closer ranges, but if you can keep your head about you, it shouldn’t be much of an issue. Basically just meditation and extensive practice, at that point. Given how long you’ve had to work with, what you’ve got going is pretty good. Moving targets at a hundred and fifty meters is no joke.”

“Uh… thanks?”

“How are you on stiller targets?”

Lance made a face, trying to work out the numbers in his head. “I don’t… I don’t really know. Don’t usually have the time for still targets at long distances unless I’m in my lion, and I’m not sure how to gauge the distance on the few occasions I _have_ had to do that sort of thing.”

TenTen’s eyes lit up. “You wanna figure that out? We have time and targets to spare.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Is it just me,” Pidge started, “Or are there a bunch of ninjas watching Lance shoot things without even a hint of subtlety?”

Hunk craned his head in the direction Pidge was staring. “You mean other than the three that led him off in the first pl—oh wow, that’s actually a decent number of people.”

“You’d think that, given everything else we’ve seen, they’d have experience with something as impressive as Lance doing trick shots.”

Hunk shrugged. “I mean, Lance is a _really_ good sharpshooter.”

“Yeah, but we saw a guy literally turn into a _giant flaming fox_ today.”

There was a momentary silence.

“Skill versus size?” Hunk suggested.

“You saw what the ninja over there did earlier, though.” Pidge pointed out. “Like, that was some extreme speed.”

“She was at twenty, maybe twenty-five yards, though, right? Lance is working at a longer distance. And he’s probably impressive partly because he’s not actually a ninja like them.”

“I guess,” Pidge allowed, taking a sip of their drink and watching as Lance took another shot and then stepped back to listen to something from the ninja with the braided buns. “You wanna go play with the sound system?”

“Can we?” Hunk asked, turning back to Pidge.

They shrugged. “I’m bored, and all the music tonight has been local. I want something from home.”

“Do you have any files with you?”

“Yep.”

“Are they compatible locally?”

“Yeah, I figured it out earlier when I fixed up their video chat system.”

Hunk thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure, let’s go see if we can convince the DJ to let us choose some songs.”

o.o.o.o.o

“No, thank you,” Allura said, denying the drink offered her way. She pushed back the hand holding it with the palm of her own, a slightly strained smile on her face. “Altean systems are not capable of processing ethanol as human ones are.”

“I’ll take it,” Keith said, reaching out towards the drink that a bemused Kakashi was still holding.

“No,” Shiro said, just a little sharply, grabbing Keith’s wrist and pulling it down.

There was a short stare-off.

“I’m old enough to drink, Shiro.”

“Not legally in the country you’re a citizen of,” Shiro argued.

“We’re not even _in_ the US,” Keith protested. “And it’s not like I’ll have a lot.”

“You’re a lightweight and you know it.”

“So?” Keith pulled his hand back and out of Shiro’s grip. “Besides, you’re not my dad or anything. I can have a drink if I want.”

“You’re too y—”

“As fascinating as this is,” Tsunade interrupted, “Konoha rules are that sixteen is a legal drinking age for anyone seeing the field of battle.”

“Technically, the wording is that sixteen is the legal drinking age for shinobi, but I think the version that Tsunade-sama just suggested is more in line with the spirit of law,” Kakashi added, holding out the drink towards Shiro and Keith and wiggling it a little. “One drink won’t hurt.”

“His tolerance is basically non-existent,” Shiro said drily.

“Perhaps due to his mixed heritage,” Allura suggested, as this was at least something she could feasibly contribute to the discussion. She had very little experience with anything akin to a ‘legal drinking age,’ given how poisonous ethanol was to most species. “The Galra don’t have the same resistance to ethanol as humans do, after all.”

Keith gave them both a sour look as he took the drink. “Maybe Shiro should drink something.”

“Keith, no.”

“I know for a fact that you were a social drinker before Kerberos. How long has it been since you had alcohol?” Keith asked.

Shiro made a face. “That’s really not relevant. I need to stay alert in case the Galra come back. I can’t afford to get intoxicated.”

“Actually…” Kakashi interrupted, gesturing to Tsunade.

The woman shrugged. “I don’t usually do it for anyone other than myself, but in an emergency, it’s entirely possible for me to speed process the alcohol in a person’s system and induce sobriety.”

Keith grinned in a manner that Shiro could have almost called impish.

“…fine,” he sighed. “But only because everyone else, regardless of rank, seems to be drinking if they can handle it.”

“So, fruity drink or hard liquor?” Keith asked, because of course he remembered Shiro’s offhand mentions of his preferred drinking habits. “What’ll it be?”

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck. “Fruity, I guess. Let’s ease back into it.”

“I’ll go get it,” Kakashi said, turning towards the bar. “Anyone else want anything?”

“More sake,” Tsunade said, holding up her near-empty bottle and wiggling it.

“Tequila,” Keith answered promptly, and Shiro was going to have a lot of questions later regarding why his little pseudo-brother had a favorite alcohol.

Actually.

There wasn’t anything stopping him right now…

“Keith, why did you pick tequila?”

Keith shrugged. “Heard it’s the best to help a person loosen up.”

And if he glanced towards the dance floor as he said that, hands fidgeting at his sides…

Well, Shiro wouldn’t comment on that.

“How many poisons do you humans _put_ in your food?” Allura asked, and Shiro looked over to see her frowning at the scanner in her hands as she passed it over a bowl of chips on a nearby table of snacks. “This is ridiculous.”

“Is this about the capsaicin again?” Shiro asked, because the incident with Lance had definitely put that into perspective.

“No, acetic acid. I can’t even tell why it’s there. Is it another matter of flavor?” Allura looked up at him in concern. “Or is this only a local trend?”

Shiro made a face, unsure. He glanced at Keith, who shrugged.

“I’m… not sure what acetic acid is,” he admitted, turning back to Allura. “If it has a more common name, then maybe I can—”

“It’s the active ingredient in vinegar,” Tsunade interrupted, sounding bored. “Also, seriously? Even that’s harmful to you?”

Whatever Allura might have planned on saying was lost as Keith darted past her and Shiro, grabbed a plate, and immediately started piling it high with chips.

Shiro wrinkled his nose. “Really?”

“Shut up.”

“I still can’t believe you like vinegar chips.”

“They taste good. Let me have this,” Keith said as he started eating, not even breaking eye contact with Shiro as he did so.

“If you say so.” Shiro shook his head.

(He got the feeling that Allura was judging them again.)

Kakashi showed back up with a platter balanced on his hand, and passed out drinks. Shiro’s was a bright, frothy pink, which tasted just as sweet as he’d hoped. He nonetheless eyed the tray with worry, because there were more tequila shots on there than he’d hoped. Big shots, too.

“I can handle it,” Keith argued, having noticed Shiro’s expression. He knocked back the shot in one big gulp, and then raised an eyebrow at Shiro as he put it back on the tray.

“That is not the reaction of someone drinking liquor for the first time,” Shiro pointed out, trying not to sound too accusatory.

“After Kerberos went wrong, I made a lot of bad decisions,” Keith responded.

Shiro felt his own eyes widen because no, Keith can’t have made _that_ many bad decisions, right? Alcohol was one thing, but the way he was phrasing it was—

“Calm down, Shiro. If it was like _that_ , I’d have had withdrawal symptoms on the castle. Or something. Point is, it never got that far.”

Oh. Right. That. He could have hidden that, but… okay. At least Keith was good at figuring out what he was thinking without having to have it spelled out. It was nice to have someone like that on the team.

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Sorry. I just… worry.”

“I know.”

Keith then disregarded that worry in favor of grabbing another shot.

“Keith.”

“I know my limits, Shiro, and they are very low.” Keith set the now-empty shot glass back on the table.

Kolivan appeared in Shiro’s peripheral vision, and he turned to greet the Galra. “Having fun?”

“I am very concerned by your species’ omnivorous habits,” Kolivan responded.

“ _Thank_ you,” Allura said, though quietly. “I always knew that some species had wider resistances, but this is just ridiculous.”

“First of all, I’m sure that there’s something you can digest things that we would die of, like arsenic or cyanide or something. Second of all… are you still bitter about the onions?” Shiro asked. That had turned into a bit of a sticky point. “I’m sure Hunk can make you something on the ship that doesn’t have anything you and Coran are allergic to.”

“Quite frankly, I’m still taken aback at the acetic acid,” Allura said, shaking her head.

“Have you ever seen what happens when you put a chicken bone in a glass of vinegar?” Keith asked, a smirk on his face that Shiro did not like the look of one bit.

“Oh, I know this one,” Kakashi said. “The vinegar eats away at the calcium and what you’re left with is all bendy.”

“And yet you insist on consuming it,” Allura said, though she sounded like she’d given up on convincing even herself that this was odd.

“Well, it’s not like we’re putting it on our bones,” Tsunade snorted. “It doesn’t exactly have the same effect on the digestive system.”

“It’s still an acid.”

“That one actually isn’t very strange,” Kolivan said slowly. “Galra are also able to digest acetic acid. It tastes unpleasant if not diluted in other foods, but it’s not actually poisonous as capsaicin and ethanol are.”

“Want a vinegar chip?” Keith asked, holding one out. He’d already eaten half the plate, somehow. Teenage appetite, probably. “It’s what Allura scanned to find out about the acetic acid thing.”

Kolivan raised an eyebrow, raised his own scanner to confirm there weren’t _other_ questionable substances on the chip, and then deigned to take it.

“This is quite good,” he decided.

“Glad to know the local food passes inspection,” Tsunade snorted. “By the way, Shirogane? One of your little friends looks like he’s doing something you might find dangerous.”

Shiro froze. “What?”

She gestured behind him.

Shiro turned and looked around for a bit, not immediately finding what was wrong. He eventually zeroed in on the far end of the meadow, to see that Lance was surrounded by a small crowd of shinobi. They’d made way for a small path, two or three yards across, and several dozen long.

“Do you know what he’s about to do?” Allura asked.

“I have a suspicion.”

Shiro’s suspicion was proven correct as Lance took off at a run and flung himself forward.

Round-off, back-handspring, back-handspring, back-handspring, _double back-tuck._

And he stuck the landing.

“…Allura, did you know he could do that?”

“No.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then over at Keith.

He shrugged. “Lance bragged about it once, but I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not.”

Shiro watched with burgeoning worry as Lance repeated the action, switching out the tucks for a full layout, and then started back to the other bar on wobbly legs with the support of a laughing ninja.

“Sakura-chan is over there,” Kakashi said after a long moment, drawing Shiro’s attention. “If anyone gets hurt, she’s there to fix it.”

“She’s that good?”

“The only person on the continent that’s _better_ is me,” Tsunade said. “Stop worrying, brat.”

“Brat?” Shiro blinked. “You don’t look that much older than me.”

Tsunade bit her lip and looked away, stifling an apparent grin.

“Tsunade-sama is a little over sixty years old,” Kakashi offered.

Shiro choked on his drink.

“What?”

“Pick your jaw up off the floor, you’ll catch flies,” Tsunade said, a laugh still on her face.

“You don’t look a day over thirty.”

“I’ve aged well.”

“ _That_ ,” a familiar voice chimed as an arm slung itself over Tsunade’s shoulders, “is a pile of horseshit, Baa-chan.”

Naruto received a light punch to his ribs for his troubles. Granted, he was still left wheezing and clutching at them, but it was certainly lighter than what Tsunade could have managed otherwise, going by the earlier displays of strength.

“Watch what you say, brat.”

“C’mon, we both know you looked pretty terrible ‘til Karin-nee-chan healed you during the fourth war,” Naruto continued, seemingly unaware of the growing irritation on Tsunade’s face.

Shiro was momentarily distracted by movement in the corner of his eye. Keith was taking another shot.

“Keith…”

“It’s only my third.”

“We both know that two is enough to—”

“I’ll leave them alone for at least an hour after I drink this one,” Keith promised, backing away like he was worried Shiro was going to lunge to steal the tequila away. “I’ll drink plenty of water and eat plenty of food that would make Coran and Allura cry.”

Allura scoffed, but it was worth noting that the plate that was once piled high with vinegar chips was now empty.

“I still don’t understand why this is considered pleasant,” Allura muttered.

“If I am not mistaken,” Kolivan said, a glint in his eyes. “Did Nunvill not serve a similar purpose on Altea?”

“That was completely different, and most certainly not as damaging to the body!”

Shiro almost commented, but the song changed and struck a horrid chord of familiarity in his chest. It was simultaneously elating and dread-inducing, and it took him a moment to realize why. He spun to face the DJ stand, and… yep. Pidge and Hunk had taken over.

“Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon,” Pidge crowed into a handy microphone, “I wanted some music from _our_ human planet, so I’m shoving a bunch of memes that have really silly dances designed for twelve-year-olds in your direction. Have fun!”

Shiro and Keith exchanged a look, even as Hunk made his way down towards what could feasibly be called a dance floor, and Lance’s excited crowing could be heard from the direction of the second bar.

“You know how to—”

“Of course.”

“…should we?”

Shiro knocked back his drink, put aside the glass, and headed out onto the floor instead of answering. Like hell he was going to miss out on a taste of familiarity, however embarrassing.

(He did not miss the fact that most of his conversational group followed them, or that Coran and various others were doing the same. It looked like plenty of people wanted to see what was going on.)

o.o.o.o.o

“Okay, okay, okay,” Konohamaru said as they stumbled back from the impromptu demo space. He was laughing, but it was a deep-bellied laugh of enjoyment rather than anything mocking, so Lance didn’t mind. “You seriously learned all that because of a _movie?_ ”

“Swear it on my grand-daddy’s grave, yeah. My sisters and I _really_ liked Bring It On as kids, and ended up taking gymnastics and cheer classes when they were affordable.” Lance laughed a little himself, still feeling like his legs were jelly after the sudden exercise. He’d stretched before starting, of course, but he hadn’t done tumbling properly in _months_. Also, he was finding it hard to _not_ giggle, so that made it harder to stand as well. “I think my mom mostly agreed to it because she was scared I’d hurt myself if I practiced the moves without proper instruction.”

“Sounds like a lot of kids,” Konohamaru noted as they made it back to the bar. “Your legs okay?”

“Yeah, I’m cool.” Lance took a seat. “So, I feel like I did okay with impressing people tonight.”

“Your aim is impeccable with that… rifle?”

“Laser rifle.”

“Yeah, that, and the acrobatics isn’t something we really see in civilians, so people were enjoying that. I’m going to take your word for your hand-to-hand being bad, though; you’re just… a little too perfect at the moment. There’s gotta be something wrong.” Konohamaru put a hand to his chest, batting his lashes in false sincerity.

“ _Flatterer!”_ Lance gasped in delight, clapping his hands. “And here I was thinking I’d made a fool of myself.”

“Well, you did get a drink dumped on your head,” Konohamaru said as he reached over the bar to grab two water bottles, tossing one to Lance. “And the night’s still young!”

“It is indeed,” Lance said, bumping his bottle against Konohamaru’s.

“Kanpai!”

“¡Salud!”

Lance drained half the bottle almost immediately.

“Okay, so, how long did learning all that take?”

“Well, the triple back-handspring with a normal back tuck took four months, and the layout and double-tuck took another three after that. That was all after I’d spent a few years working my way up through the skillset, though.”

“Nice. Good to see some dedication in the defenders of the universe.”

“You really like calling me that.”

“It’s absurdly funny to say,” Konohamaru admitted. “I’m still hung up on the idea of aliens other than the Ootsutsuki.”

“I keep hearing that name, and I still don’t know what you’re all referring to.”

Konohamaru made a face. “That’s… a really long, really depressing story. Maybe some other time?”

“There’s going to be another time?” Lance sent the other boy what he thought was a winning grin.

It apparently worked. “Well, if you’re willing.”

“That’s—” Lance choked on his water as a new song started.

No way. No _freaking_ way.

Pidge started talking, but all Lance could do was turn to face Konohamaru again, grab his hands, and say, “Come dance with me.”

“…okay?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fun.”

His legs were feeling better now, and that meant a lot of fun.

“ _When I dance, they call me Macarena,”_

“Okay, so,” he dragged Konohamaru along by the wrist, heading for the front near the speakers, where he could see Shiro and Kolivan and the shiny white mass of hair that signified Allura. “There’s gonna be a bunch of dances that all have really simple, repetitive steps, if what Pidge said is right. I promise I can dance properly, but right now, it’s time for dorky middle school stuff.”

“I can dig that,” Konohamaru said.

Lance reached his friends, got into line, and then nodded at the ninjas he recognized. “Just follow along. It’s super simple.”

He turned to face forward again as the first stanza hurtled towards the end. He grinned sideways at Hunk.

“Ready to act like we just shaved five years off our ages?”

“Wouldn’t be down here if I wasn’t.”

Lance barked out a laugh, but then the main chorus began.

“ _Dale a tu cuerpo alegria, Macarena!_ ”

Lance snorted quietly to himself as he saw people trying to pay attention to the movements of the four paladins that had taken the front of the room, to copy the freaking _Macarena_ of all things.

It was like a really dumb joke, except this was legitimately hilarious and also his life.

He started singing along as they jumped ninety degrees.

It was interesting to see a bunch of grown-ass adults, many of whom were inebriated, learning to dance this for the first time. A dance designed for children and tweens, and here it was, in all its glory, being fumbled by ninjas.

And aliens.

Lance wouldn’t dare forget about the aliens, given that he could see Allura, Coran, _and even Kolivan_ trying to play along.

The Konoha guys that seemed to be the most in charge were also here, for some reason.

Lance sang louder as he laughed.

“Does it just keep repeating like this?” Konohamaru shouted to be heard over the noise.

“Yep! They’re designed for kids, so it’s all just the same thing over and over again!” Lance shouted back.

Konohamaru almost lost his place laughing. “I love it!”

Lance grinned back at him, then looked over to where Pidge was messing with the music.

Were those Kanye West sunglasses? Where had Pidge gotten—were they covered in glitter?

Oh god, _Pidge_.

They were fiddling with something near the controls, something that looked distinctly modern and possibly Altean in a way that the rest of the equipment did not.

As the next song started, Lance understood why.

Not everyone here was going to understand pre-recorded music in a language that wasn’t their own. The aliens had enough translation tech integrated into their systems that they’d hear it as their own, and the paladins certainly weren’t going to have trouble, but the locals? Unless they somehow spoke English, they were shit out of luck.

…unless, of course, Pidge rigged up a hologram projector from some floating bots from the Castle and had them play a video with the lyrics in both English and Japanese.

“That one’s a genius, isn’t she?” Konohamaru asked, noticing where Lance’s attention was.

“They, today, and yeah, they are. Smartest person I’ve ever met, except maybe Slav and Coran, and they’re both way older than Pidge, so I don’t really count that as fair.”

“ _This is the Casper Slide Part Two—”_

Lance pointed up at the screen. “Just follow the instructions in the song. Normally, you’d listen for them, but I doubt you can —”

“I do know English.”

Lance gaped, though he didn’t stop bouncing in place and waited to start clapping as the song instructed. “Seriously?”

“It’s pretty common in Kumo, and… well. I am an infiltration specialist.” Konohamaru shrugged. Then he smirked. “I think I could get some more practice in, though.”

“Hey, if you’re willing to listen to me yak, then I’m happy to help.”

“Lance, stop flirting with the ninja and pay attention!” Hunk called.

Lance refocused. It was just the Cha Cha Slide, this would be fine.

He got to show off, though, when the song asked “how low can you go?” Limbo was always fun.

“What the fuck, Lance?” Keith’s voice barely reached him. “ _How?_ ”

Lance just gave him a thumbs up, feeling the hair at the back of his head brush against the grass.

“This is actually a lot of fun,” Konohamaru said when the song ended, just as the next one was starting up and not quite ready for people to dance. There were more ninjas joining in behind, in rows, and Lance somehow found that hilarious. Literally dozens, maybe over a hundred, adult ninjas were there to learn from a bunch of teenagers piloting giant robot lions how to dance.

It sounded like a terrible sitcom.

“ _Yo, Cupid!”_

“This is another one where you just repeat the movement and turn left a lot,” Lance said.

“I don’t know this one,” Keith admitted, a few spots down the line.

“It’s another one with instructions in the lyrics,” Shiro assured him. “You’ll be fine.”

Lance liked this one too. The Cupid Shuffle was just as much fun as the first two.

“Do they all start out with just bouncing until— and we’re moving,” Konohamaru kept his eyes on the paladins instead of talking. “Okay, that’s actually pretty easy.”

“Told ya!” Lance called over his shoulder.

“Didn’t your boss say that there’d be instructions?”

“Give it a few more bars.”

There was a lot of group flow present when this sort of thing was going on, really, and Lance adored the feeling. As people streamlined their movements to the song, that group psychology got streamlined, too, and it was a thing of beauty. It was like… like happiness was just rebounding around him, off of endless numbers of people who all felt the same way.

“You’re in your element, huh, buddy?” Hunk asked, startling Lance out of his reverie.

“I’m on a dance floor with music I know. What’s not to love?”

The song wound down a bit more slowly than the others, a fadeout instead of an abrupt ending. It gave him a moment to breathe, grin at Hunk, and then be surprised _again_ at the new song.

“This one’s fast, but there’s no ninety-degrees,” he warned Konohamaru. “Try not to bump into anyone.”

It was the only warning he got, because Lance wasn’t lying when he said that the Cotton-Eyed Joe was fast.

There were a couple different versions of the dance for adults, Lance knew, but there only ever seemed to be two being taught to kids.

_Front, front, back, back, side, up-front, side, up-back, step, step, step, clap, and lasso back._

He heard a laugh that he didn’t often hear coming from a teammate.

That was nice. Keith didn’t laugh enough.

“This is murder on the hips,” Konohamaru said, barely loud enough for Lance to hear.

“Yeah, well, it’s fun!”

“Never said it wasn’t!”

There was actual clapping when this one ended. Lance figured that was fair, but he started coughing again at the next song.

Pidge, _no_.

“What’s the dance to this one?”

“Hold that thought,” Lance held up a finger, then turned around to Hunk. “Make sure Keith and Shiro don’t ditch for this.”

“…I’ll grab Shiro, you grab Keith?”

“Deal.”

Coran managed to convince Allura to stay, though Kolivan slipped away. The ninjas caught on pretty quick that this wasn’t going to be another one requiring everyone face the same direction.

“This one’s the simplest yet,” Lance said, putting his hands up on his head in an imitation of ears and staring down Allura and Shiro, who seemed the least excited about this. Keith seemed pretty amenable to things at the moment, which… well, Lance had heard that story months ago. “Now bounce side to side, bending your fingers. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”

“This is ridiculous,” Naruto declared with a large, wide smile.

“It’s Caramelldansen, so… yeah. It is.” Hunk shrugged, even while doing the dance.

Allura looked like she had no idea what was so appealing about this, but at least she didn’t look mad or uncomfortable.

Coran, conversely, looked delighted.

Even the blonde lady in charge of the local ninja village looked more amused than anything. White-haired guy with the scar on his eye looked bored, but Lance thought that might just be his face.

“This is it until the end?” Konohamaru asked.

“Yep.”

“That’s fucking hilarious.”

“It was a meme for a reason!”

“…I’m going to ask what a meme is later.”

 Lance almost turned and dramatically gasped and demanded what kind of humanity didn’t know what a _meme_ was, but… honestly, the dancing was more engaging.

“What do you think is next?” Hunk asked, sidling closer to Lance as the song edged towards closure.

“Hm… I can’t think of any more songs with really obvious routines. Can you?”

“Nah, but—”

The trumpets sounded and Lance squeed.

Even Shiro looked excited now. Keith, too.

“What—” Allura started to ask, but didn’t get very far.

“Young man!” All four of the paladins on the floor shouted. “There’s no need to feel down! I said, young man! Pick yourself off the ground!”

No specified dancing here, not really, just bouncing until—

“Y! M-C-A!” They shouted at the tops of their lungs, moving in tandem.

Fucking hell, this was _glorious._

“What the fuck _even._ ”

Lance wasn’t sure who asked it, but hey, it didn’t matter, right? He was singing his lungs out to a song about young, broke gay men finding shelter at the YMCA, and he was having just as much fun as everyone else was.

“I can’t believe I forgot about that one,” Hunk laughed as the song ended. “But I really do think that’s the last of the organized dances, though.”

“Pidge is going to keep memeing for a while, though.”

“I mean, yeah, but—”

The noises that came out of the speakers weren’t really _words_ , but they were nonetheless recognizable even before actual words came into play.

Lance looked up at the holographic screens with dread.

Yep. That was the Crazy Frog. Riding an invisible, possibly nonexistent hoverbike to get away from the bounty hunter.

“Fucking… _Pidge_.”

“We were right. They memed us out.”

“Bro.”

“ _Bro._ ”

“Bro?”

“Bruh.”

“Bro!”

“If you two start that again, you’re back on cleaning duty for a week,” Shiro said dryly, eyeing Lance and Hunk like they were about to start addressing him the same way.

“I would never betray you like that,” Lance promised.

“That’s a filthy lie and you know it,” Keith said, looking utterly unrepentant.

“Aw, you’re borrowing my turns of phrase!” Lance pressed his hands to his chest. “Just warms the cockles of my heart.”

“No one wants to hear about your cockles, Lance,” Allura shook her head. “Is this it? Or is there going to be more dancing?”

“Well, nothing else that’s _synchronized,_ ” Shiro said slowly, “But while Pidge is up there, we’re probably going to stay here just to enjoy the fact that it’s a familiar atmosphere with music we know.”

“Including… this?” Coran pointed at the screen.

“Pidge memed on us,” Hunk explained. “The next song will probably be just as weird, just because it can be.”

Lance was proven right when a deep, synthetic bassline passed through the speakers.

He squinted up at the video, tried hard to parse through the sounds filtering through his ears and the translation software in his brain, and then pointed at Keith. “You’re the reason we can understand this.”

Keith shrugged. “I haven’t spoken Korean in _years_ , but yeah, probably.”

“That would explain the clunkiness of the translation, I guess,” Hunk said, shrugging. “Anyway, who wants to—whoa!”

Lance dragged Hunk to a slightly clearer area with a wide smile. “Dance, buddy.”

“Oh my god, Lance,” Hunk laughed. “Fine, yes, I’ll Gangnam Style with you.”

Lance caught Shiro trying to explain the video to Allura, who seemed more confused than dismissive, while everyone else in the area seemed to be enjoying themselves the same way Lance was.

Oh well. It was better than being judged, honestly. It was going much better than expected.

He got another laugh when Hatsune Miku took up the screen unexpectedly, but didn’t stick around.

“Water break?” He asked around, getting a few confirmations that lead to most of the group heading towards the bars again.

“No more tequila for you,” Shiro said as Keith got closer to the bar, shoving a bottle of water into his hands. “Give it another half hour.”

“Are you telling me that Mr. Perfect Pilot is a lush?” Lance gasped dramatically and leered. “Who’d a thunk?”

“Get fucked,” was Keith’s reply. “You know I just have a shitty tolerance.”

“Fair enough,” Lance sighed, grabbing the shot and turning to Shiro. He held it out with a smile. “Shouldn’t let it go to waste, right?”

Shiro made a face. “I’m not a big fan of tequila.”

“Well, _I’m_ sure as hell not going to drink it,” Lance snorted. “Somebody’s gotta.”

Naruto plucked it out of his hand and knocked it back. “And there, problem solved. On the other hand… what _do_ you want to drink?”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Fine. Sugary and strong, so… jello shots.”

“You know what? I’ll take one of those, too,” Lance said, bouncing on his toes. “Jello tends to mask the taste a lot.”

“Says the guy who ate a Carolina Reaper for a bet,” Hunk said, knocking their shoulders together.

“I got money out of that, though. What do I get out of drinking something that tastes bad when I don’t even like being drunk?” Lance made a face.

“You ate a what?” Konohamaru asked. “What’s a Carolina Reaper?”

“One of the hottest peppers in the world, back home,” Lance said. “Spicier than a Ghost Pepper, and that’s saying something.”

Konohamaru laughed. “Oh, that must have _hurt_.”

“I couldn’t taste anything for like… a week,” Lance admitted. “But I got like twenty bucks and bragging rights out of it, so I’m calling it a win.”

“And who had to babysit your ass after that?” Hunk asked.

“My best bro,” Lance said, falling backwards and draping himself dramatically against Hunk.

“Bro.”

“ _Bro_.”

“No,” Keith interrupted, pointing at both of them. “ _No._ ”

Lance pouted, but then a song change came and he brightened again. “Oh man.”

“ _SomeBODY once told me—_ ”

Lance started singing along, pointing at the other paladins until they joined in, usually glancing up at Pidge’s holo-screen to get the lyrics.

Lance personally switched out the lyrics for the meme-ridden parody at one point, but nobody seemed to notice. Sadness.

“How do you all know so many of these?” Konohamaru asked during an instrumental break.

“They’re just really popular,” was the best Lance could come up with. “Or they were in childhood favorite movies.”

This was followed by, for some reason, ‘Safety Dance.’ Lance figured that Pidge was just having too much fun memeing it out to people who had no idea what the joke was.

“I hope there’s more normal music soon,” Hunk muttered at one point. “The memes are fun and all, but it’s been almost an hour and I’m getting a little bored of it.”

“You could go talk to Pidge?” Lance suggested. “See if they can mix it up a little?”

Hunk nodded after a moment, and then began the process of winding his way over to the DJ stand.

He apparently succeeded, because the sweet voice of Taylor Swift hit the air a few moments later.

He whooped and rushed out onto the floor, which had by this point reverted into a near-mosh pit environment.

“ _I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling twenty-two!_ ”

It was bodies pressed against bodies, sweaty skin on thin fabrics, hair in faces and feet clambering over each other as hundreds of people celebrated living another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to get through more of the night but hahaha nope. I actually cut the chapter off here because seeing everything from Lance's POV as the songs cycle through on their way to the ones that are actually plot-relevant was getting really repetitive and somewhat unenjoyable. (There are plot-relevant songs? Yes.) Coran will start off the next chapter and hopefully that's going to let me keep my plans intact.
> 
> That said, I actually do need feedback on something: **Pidge's pronouns are giving me writing trouble.**  
>  (Please do not comment ONLY on this, though. It's a question, but if it's the only thing you comment on, it's going to feel like I wrote over 7k words for nothing.)
> 
> When I started this fic, I headcanoned Pidge as agender. In the months since then, my interpretation has shifted to viewing Pidge primarily as a girl (whether cis or trans depends on the fic I'm writing, if the distinction comes up at all). As a result, I'm having trouble writing Pidge's scenes because my instinct these days for Pidge is to write with she/her, rather than they/them.
> 
> I _could_ feasibly go back and edit previous chapters in order to make things easier on myself and simply have Pidge be a girl from the beginning, but that seems like it would be in poor taste.
> 
> The second option is the one I'm leaning towards at the moment (as you can likely tell with some offhand lines in this chapter), which is having Pidge be girl/nb genderfluid, and these first chapters just being a they/them day; it would let me have Pidge-heavy chapters without having to worry about pronoun-related typos getting past me (I don't have a beta, FYI, and I'm terrible about certain kinds of typos), while still having shorter, easier-to-edit scenes where Pidge does use they/them, and doesn't result in me dropping the nb representation that I had going in this fic.
> 
> The third option is to include a subplot regarding Pidge exploring their gender identity and how going undercover might have caused some contemplation and changes that didn't necessarily last. The progression would be: trans girl Katie Holt enters Garrison as Pidge, does not experience as much dysphoria as expected and considers that she may be nb instead, identifies as nb for several months during Voltron (current point in time), and then returns to identifying as a trans girl after some introspection). This would include a lot of Hunk, since I headcanon him as a trans guy. _However_ , I'm super leery of doing this one, because I am not trans or nb, and would very likely make some mistake. Also, there's the whole "don't tell a story about BEING a minority unless you ARE that minority" thing. I'm not trans, and it wouldn't really be right of me to write a narrative, even a subplot, about being trans. I do like the idea of it, but I feel uncomfortable with the idea of writing it, and it would add a new subplot to an already extensive plot plan.
> 
> The fourth option is to simply continue writing Pidge as nb. It's the easiest option for the readers, but as a writer, it's going to be a lot of trouble for me, and one that would likely sap my enthusiasm for this story due to the fact that I'd be writing directly against one of my headcanons, and that never ends well (whether the headcanon is as important as gender identity or as tangential as spice tolerance levels, if I go against mine while writing, it's draining). It would also result in a lot of typos; I can catch grammar or spelling mistakes most of the time, but stuff like this is harder and would slip past, which would also lower reader enjoyment, I imagine. This also isn't one of those situations that a simple "I believe you can do it!" will fix; I know how my brain works and have written fanfic enough to know what's going to happen if I try this option, much as I hate to admit it, because I really hoped I'd be able to write nb Pidge through the whole fic.
> 
> So, thoughts?


	6. The Party (Pt III)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything winds down a little. Coran makes some acquaintances. Shiro makes a friend. Lance gets a little too close to a ninja for Allura's nerves to handle. Dance battles happen.
> 
> And everyone finds out what a "Konoha Special" is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist for the party (just hit shuffle after J-Lo's "Let's Get Loud," since that's the last plot-relevant song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wINQ4ywd3U&list=PLwLMOOiOE5vwoQ_33AsEqtB_D5P3kXWoB&index=1  
> Obviously, these aren't the versions of the songs that Pidge is using, because music videos often include a lot of unnecessary footage, but it's a decent version of the overall thing.

Coran had vacated the area after it became clear that organized dancing was no longer going to be happening, leaving the paladins and Allura to their own devices. He made the rounds of the meadow instead, greeting people when he could, asking questions about the local culture when possible, and otherwise attempting to play the diplomat.

“—eah, well, once an Oto brat, always an Oto brat.”

Coran stilled as he passed two people from… Earth Country, was it? Tsuchi no Kuni was what he heard when he focused past the translators, but the technology tended to give him vaguer translations in an attempt at accuracy. They glanced at him dismissively before returning to their conversation as he forced himself to pass almost out of earshot; it was definitely too far for a human to hear, in his experience, but for an Altean…

“Gramps, you know they get pissed when people say that.”

“I still say we should have kept them locked up for what they did in the war. S-rank nukenin aren’t supposed to get _pardons_.”

“They’re contributing.”

“They’re _menaces_. Stop pretending you like them, Kurotsuchi. You know as well as I do that they’re terrible people.”

“…we’re in Konoha, Gramps. You might be Tsuchikage, but if they have anything approaching friends, then those people live _here_. I’d rather not piss off Konoha’s best, y’know.”

 Coran followed the line of sight, not even pretending to be subtle about it; what he’d heard of these ‘shinobi’ so far indicated that attempting to practice deception of that sort would be laughed at. So he was polite, but obvious, in following their gazes to the subjects of their discussion.

At a table under a tree, sitting alone, were the red-headed girl and the boy with the mismatched eyes.

(Not children, Coran reminded himself. They were terribly young by Altean standards, but fully adult by human ones.)

He made his way over. He had questions he wanted to ask anyway.

“Is this seat taken?” He asked, gesturing to a free chair.

Sasuke looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. His hand was rubbing at Karin’s back where she was slumped over the table, a bottle in one hand. “What do you think?”

“I think that I would prefer to know if people are open to my company before forcing it upon them.”

“That’s real cute,” Karin scoffed, sitting up. Her bottle of… ethanol of some sort, Coran was sure, was near-empty, but her eyes were clear and the blush he’d been assured was common to intoxicated humans was nowhere to be seen. “Sure. Take a seat, though I don’t know why you’d want one over here.”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” Coran asked. What little he knew of these people was rumors, ones that he had no context for. That wasn’t enough to stop him, not yet.

“We’re not exactly the friendliest of people,” Karin said, looking at him through half-lidded eyes that he’d have said spoke of derision if he hadn’t seen her use that same expression while placating aggressive elements amongst the other shinobi earlier. “We tend to be a little… insular.”

Sasuke made a scoffing noise, but didn’t comment, just took a sip of his own drink, something that was a deep orange in the flickering light that came down from a nearby torch.

“What do you want, space man?” Karin asked. She sounded tired.

Coran kept his tone even. “I was wondering if I could consult with you on the nature of your manipulations of quintessence.”

Both of them froze for a moment, and then Karin leaned forward across the table, while Sasuke settled further into his seat. There was a glint in her eyes, interest and maybe something else. “You mean chakra?”

“I believe that was the comparison that was drawn, yes.”

“Why me?” She asked.

Coran considered that for a moment. He knew _why_ he wanted to ask her, but how to phrase it… “Your manipulations were done, as far as I could tell, with a very pure form of quintessence. The others seemed to tend to use it in techniques that involve elements or specialized systems, but the scanners showed something less… processed, I suppose, in your chains and barrier.”

“Yeah?” She tilted her head, eyeing him in consideration. “What about my cousin, with his fox? Or Sasuke with Susanoo? Or Sakura’s explosive punching?”

Coran frowned, trying to match up names with techniques. “I don’t believe it was quite the same thing. The creature was as much its own entity as it was used by… Naruto, I believe? And I do not believe I witnessed the other two, though I will admit that I do not know what this ‘Susanoo’ is.”

“Giant purple armor,” Sasuke said.

“Ah. Yes, that was… oddly tainted. I wasn’t sure what to make of it,” Coran admitted.

Karin took a long drink from her bottle. “Alright, that answers that. Any other reasons I should play along? What do you want to know, and why?”

“From what I understand, you are a scientist.” Coran had only managed to ask a few questions about whom he could speak with regarding quintessence study, but ‘Otogakure’ had cropped up at least once, and Karin’s name in particular had certainly been mentioned. “And you are fairly well-versed in this field of study, yes?”

“I might be.”

Coran stifled his immediate reaction of disapproval at the almost condescendingly ambivalent answer. He understood that she was trying to rile him up somehow, though he had no idea _why_.

“I also was informed that you do not have any work to do while in this village, correct? This could provide an opportunity to exchange information on—”

“Why?” Karin interrupted. “Why do you want to know more about chakra study?”

Coran frowned. “The druids make use of quintessence in ways that we don’t fully understand, and can’t counter, not yet. Most of the empirical studies of quintessence that I may have once had access to were lost with the fall of Altea; there’s very little information available to reference when trying to understand what the druids do. The more we understand what they’re doing, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to counter it.”

She tilted her head, eyeing him, then turned to Sasuke. “Seems like a Konoha type.”

“Heard a few stories up there that make it sound like he’s more ours, though.”

“Yeah? What way?”

“The Taka way.”

“…huh,” Karin turned back to Coran. She bit her lip and continued to stare at him for a moment. “Alright, then. Come find me tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do.”

Coran blinked, then smiled widely. “Wonderful! I look forward to working with you, ah… how would you prefer to be addressed?”

“Ms. Uzumaki works fine,” she waved the question off. “Just Uzumaki is fine, if you want to drop honorifics.”

(And if he listened past the translators, he heard that it was “Uzumaki-san” rather than “Ms. Uzumaki,” but… well. He’d work with what he was given.)

And if someone stopped him on his way back into the crowd, told him to avoid the Oto shinobi for his own sake, to watch his back for poisoned knives and words, to be _careful_ because nobody was here to judge, but Oto shinobi were _dangerously unstable_ , you know…

Well, if that happened, he certainly wasn’t going to acknowledge it. Take it into account, most certainly, but acknowledge it?

Coran held his suspicions close to the chest and played the bumbling royal advisor, as he ever had.

o.o.o.o.o

“Holy shit, I _love_ this,” Konohamaru said, seeming honestly delighted. “You said this was a publicity stunt?”

“Yeah.”

“Did it work?”

“People were making ‘What Does the Fox Say’ jokes for months, if I remember my meme history correctl,” Lance answered. He hadn’t been _alive_ back then, but more than one insomnia-fueled delve into meme records had left him with an odd degree of knowledge in regards to the subject.

“ _Good_ ,” Konohamaru said. “Can I get a copy of some of this later? I’m sure a few of these songs are going to end up locally popular. Naruto might listen to this one just to piss off Kurama!”

“…who?”

“The giant fox sealed into his stomach.”

Lance considered that. “I’m going to pretend I understand what you mean.”

“That’s fair,” Konohamaru allowed. “I’ve been doing the same thing for a lot of what you’ve been saying.”

Lance faked a gasp, hand to his chest even as he kept dancing. “And here I was, thinking we had something _special_.”

Konohamaru snorted, but reached out and took Lance’s hand, pulling and spinning him until Lance’s back was pressed to Konohamaru’s chest.

His lips brushed against Lance’s ear. “We still can, if you’d like.”

“Might just take you up on that.”

And if the hands on Lance’s hips pulled him back until their bodies were flush against each other… well, _Lance_ certainly wasn’t going to be the one complaining.

This changed just two songs later, when, after laughing his way through “I’m Blue (da ba dee da ba da),” he heard Pidge put on “Shots.”

Lance pulled away from Konohamaru and headed for the bar. He shouted over his shoulder, “Come on!”

He may have grabbed Shiro and Keith on the way, which lead to that entire group drifting after them.

“No, Lance.”

“You heard the song, Shiro! Time for shots!” He caught the bartender’s attention. “A row of vodka shots!”

“Vodka?” Shiro asked, almost sounding offended.

“Would you prefer something else?”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t risk alcohol poisoning by—”

“I know my limits, Shiro. And _you_ need to loosen up a bit!” Lance gestured at the row of shots that the bartender placed in front of them. “Give me _one_ reason you’re refusing to drink other than some currently-unnecessary attachment to responsibility!”

Shiro hesitated.

“Listen, if you don’t want to drink because you hate the taste or hangovers or just don’t like getting drunk, that’s fine. Hell, that’s why _I’m_ not getting drunk either, just taking a few for the social aspect. But if it’s just about being the responsible adult, then I’m here to remind you that tonight, you don’t _need_ to be that guy.” Lance grabbed Shiro’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “So. Shots?”

“ _—if you ain’t getting’ drunk, get the FUCK out the club!”_

“Fine,” Shiro sighed. “I’ll have a few. But if I go too far, _you_ are dragging me back to castle.”

“Nah, I can’t lift your cyborg ass,” Lance waved him off. “But I’ll hold the bucket if you throw up.”

“How gentlemanly of you,” Shiro muttered, but nonetheless grabbed a shot, pursing his lips when Lance (and several of the shinobi) grabbed one too. “Bottoms up, I guess.”

Everyone gave their own variant on “Cheers!” as they knocked back a shot, and the bartender obligingly (and with, perhaps, a long-suffering sigh) refilled their shotglasses.

Lance was pretty sure that Shiro had been hoping for a drink for much longer than he was willing to admit, going by the fact that he ended up drinking four shots in a row right then.

(He did stop Keith after two, though, which… well. Lance wasn’t going to comment.)

(Much.)

“I think it’s time for a Konoha special, don’t you?” Tsunade said, just as they were finishing their drinks. “Kakashi?”

“Seems like the kind of song to do it for.”

“A… what?” Allura asked. “What is a ‘Konoha Special?’”

Tsunade gave her a smile that was more smug than anything.

“Watch.”

She made a hand sign under her chin, tipped her head back, and breathed out a spout of flame ten meters high.

Lance was not ashamed to say that he may have squawked in surprise and jumped backwards, bumping into Keith. He was especially not ashamed since Keith did the same thing, and the aliens didn’t do much better.

Kakashi joined in on the flames thing, the mask somehow not catching fire. Konohamaru laughed and did the same. The roar of the crowd reached a fever pitch as people all over the field either tipped back their heads to join in on the flames or screamed in approval if they, presumably, were incapable of doing so.

Naruto, apparently skipping a few steps, just coated himself in yellow flames and floated into the sky. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

“OI! SASUKE!”

Lance followed his line of sight to a distant, barely-visible table with two people at it: the redheaded woman with glasses and the one-armed guy with the mismatched eyes, if Lance wasn’t wrong.

The guy stood up, his movements speaking of exasperation, like he was humoring the guy that was _literally on fire_. He tipped his head back and—

“Holy _fuck_ ,” Lance choked out, shielding his eyes as an unreasonably large ball of fire bloomed into being above the dance floor. It must have been at least a few dozen meters across, maybe more. That was just… ridiculous. Pointless in its hugeness, even.

The crowd roared its approval.

“ _That_ is a Konoha special,” Tsunade said, sounding pleased. “If you’re here and the party goes on long enough, it’s happening.”

“Unless you’re indoors and might accidentally burn down the building you’re in,” Kakashi said drily.

Tsunade shrugged. “Meh. That’s what we have Yamato and Suiton users for.”

Lance considered addressing that, and then decided that he didn’t really care, now that the fire was over.

“Let’s dance!” Lance said, grabbing Shiro’s hand and jerking his chin at the rest of the people around him. “We can call Hunk down and just do a paladin circle.”

“Pidge—”

“Would probably hurt me if I tried to make them dance,” Lance said. “Now come on, I hear Fergalicious, and bitch, if that ain’t me…”

“Stop,” Shiro said, but there was a laugh in his voice and a shine in the eyes that told Lance that he’d probably made a good decision in convincing Shiro to drink.

This decision was reaffirmed when, after Fergalicious, some country song that Lance and Keith had far too much fun with, and yet another meme, Pidge brought LMFAO back around. The alcohol had worked its way fully into their systems by that point, and Lance was riding the party high like he was born for it.

“ _When I walk on by—_ ”

“Take it off!” He yelled at Shiro, as _Sexy and I Know It_ played around them. “Striptease, c’mon!”

And Shiro, bless his heart, _actually did it_.

Okay, so he didn’t take his pants off, and he was blushing like mad, but he still took off his shirt, making it as slow and as sensual as possible, and… okay, wow, he was _definitely making eye contact with the white-haired guy._ Lance didn’t see the appeal, considering said guy was hiding most of his face, but… whatever got Shiro’s rocks off or whatever.

“I guess your friend there has a type?” Konohamaru muttered, just barely close enough to hear, and Lance couldn’t help but laugh.

“Hell if I know,” he said easily. “What do you think of the show?”

“Damn nice musculature right there,” Konohamaru sighed. “So many dirty thoughts in my head right now…”

“Don’t bring them up to him and make him uncomfortable.”

“Oh, trust me, I won’t. I don’t want to be _that guy_ for anyone, let alone a potential ally.” Konohamaru grinned, leaning a little closer. “Besides, why would I flirt with a guy that probably sees me as a kid when I’ve got a much more receptive party right here?”

“Flirt? Is that what we’ve been doing?” Lance turned around and pressed his ass back against Konohamaru again. “See, I wasn’t completely sure…”

“I could make it clearer, if you’d like,” the voice was as soft as it could be, with the music being what it was.

“Mm, maybe later. I just want to dance right now,” Lance said, staying right where he was and grinding. “If you’re okay with that.”

“ _Very_ okay,” Konohamaru assured him.

They kept grinding through the next two songs, even if Lance was laughing a little at Pidge’s choices of “It’s Raining Men” and “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” and maybe switched from dancing with Konohamaru to dicking around with Keith for the latter. What could he say? Any country song on the list was going to be a time to bullshit with Keith, and it wasn’t like Keith minded, given how he hung off of Lance and shouted along to the lyrics with him.

But then there was another song switch, and Lance couldn’t help it. He really couldn’t, especially when he saw Hunk making his way down from where he was with Pidge, because he knew how much this meant to Lance.

Lance ran for a table, stepping up just as the real solo began, standing tall over the crowd and _god_ , he almost couldn’t have done this sober, but… well, he loved the song

“Dearly beloved, we gather here to say our goodbyes…” He began lipsyncing, ignoring the confusion on the faces of the shinobi at the suddenly-slower music.

But Hunk was right there below him, and so was Pidge, and even Shiro appeared to have caught on.

“La vie Boheme!”

Lance hopped up from the table to on top of bar, jamming out and winking at the bartender that was clearing off all the bottles before Lance could step on them.

(They deserved a nice tip later.)

“To being an us for once, instead of a them!”

Lance couldn’t keep the grin off of his face as Pidge and Hunk took up positions on the ground below him, moving in unison and _god_ , he’d forgotten that he’d talked them into learning some dumb choreography he’d made up for the song himself as an attempt at team bonding back at the Garrison, but, but, but—

They held out their hands and Lance spun on the spot, spreading his arms and falling backwards from off the bar, and into their not-so-gentle embraces.

They put him back on a table, but he dragged them up with him immediately afterwards, for the dialogue.

“—an impromptu salon will commence immediately following dinner. Maureen Johnson, just back from—”

The spent the rest of the song like this, Pidge only disappearing when things started slowing down again towards the end in favor of taking over the music stand again. There was an unfamiliar shinobi there, one that Pidge was already starting an argument with as “Thrift Shop” came over the speakers. Shiro wove his way back to Allura and the shinobi in-charge people.

“So… what was that?”

“Song from a musical that I really like,” Lance grabbed a bottle of water and downed a few gulps. “I was a theater kid for a few years.”

“Sounds to me like you were _everything_ for a few years, at some point.”

“Nah. I left the conspiracy theories to Kieth and Pidge,” Lance said, and then let out a small ‘oof’ as Keith elbowed him.

Konohamaru snorted out a laugh. “So what I’m getting so far is that you’re into the performing arts and shooting things.”

“And flying and sewing,” Lance added. “And… yeah, that about sums up my biggest skills.”

“It’s a pretty decent skillset,” Konohamaru said with a grave nod, which he immediately ruined by taking Lance’s water bottle right out of his hands and drinking from it.

“Woooow,” Keith drawled. “Really?”

Konohamaru eyed Lance with a grin. “Bothered by a little indirect kiss?”

“I mean, I’d prefer to take out that ‘indirect’ part,” Lance said, utterly shameless.

Keith grabbed both of their jacket sleeves and headed for the dance floor. “You were the ones that wanted to dance, so _dance_.”

“Pushy, pushy,” Lance said, but didn’t drop his grin. The song changed soon enough anyway.

“Keith.”

“No.”

“Keith!”

“What?”

“The song is telling us to _evacuate_ the dance floor, Keith, not go onto it!”

“Oh my god, Lance, fuck off.”

They made their way back over to Shiro gradually over the course of the song, still dancing. By the time the song changed again, Lance had enticed his always-stressed CO back onto the dance floor.

“C’mon, dance battle, you and me!” Lance shouted, making ‘come at me’ motions with his hands.

Shiro raised his eyebrows, looked up as though to check on the music (Scream and Shout, not the best music for this sort of thing, but acceptable enough), and then looked back down at Lance and nodded. There was a challenge in his eyes, one that Lance met gladly.

People were eager to give them some space, and eager to watch the impromptu dance battle.

The thing was, Lance was good. He _knew_ he was good. He knew that, for all of Hunk’s raw strength, Pidge’s squirreliness, and Keith’s fighting skills, _Lance_ was the one that could dance. He was the one that could move and make it look good, the one who could put on a show and grab the eyes. Acrobatics and flow, flexibility and rhythm, all of it was something Lance had a good grasp on, both naturally and through long, long practice.

The other thing was this: Shiro was almost as good as Lance was.

So when Lance started dancing, Shiro matched him. It wasn’t move for move, not when they didn’t have choreography, but whenever one’s style changed, so did the other’s, and when Lance dropped to the ground and started doing stunts, Shiro followed.

When Lance did a windmill, Shiro followed up with a jackhammer. When Lance did an elbow flare, Shiro followed up with a deadman float. And so it went on.

So if Lance started doing all the flares he knew (and he was _good_ at them) in order to win, then so be it. The 1.5 air flare got Shiro’s attention. The one-handed air flare _kept_ that attention. And the one-handed chair flare _solidified the win_.

Shiro stepped back, an utterly amused smile on his face as Lance got back to his feet, chest heaving. “Okay, okay, you win this round.”

“Duh,” Lance said, though his chest was heaving with exertion.

“Take a few songs to rest up,” Shiro suggested. “Then we can have round two.”

“Damn straight we will.”

Round two did start a few songs later, after Lance had taken the time to get a bottle of water and flirted with his pretty new ninja friend a bit more. Said pretty new ninja friend seemed pretty amused by the compliments that Lance was getting, rather than trying to stake any sort of claim, but that was probably pretty fair. Lance had more than made his interest clear tonight.

Lance hadn’t been sitting too far away from Shiro, since they’d _both_ needed a bit of a moment, so it was easy to catch Shiro’s eyes when the right song (in Lance’s humble opinion) came on.

(‘Green,’ by Toddrick Hall. Not _technically_ the right kind of song for what Lance had in mind, but…)

“A tango!” Lance called over the few seats between them.

“Got a partner?” Shiro asked, one eyebrow already raised.

Lance paused for a moment, and figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. He turned to Konohamaru. “You said you were an infil—”

“I know how to tango.”

“How the _fuck_ are you so perfect?” Lance asked.

“Magic,” he replied, already getting to his feet. “And I’m sure you’ll find something objectionable eventually. You want to take the lead?”

“I get more of a chance of giving things flair if I follow.”

“So be it,” Konohamaru said, taking up the position. “Shall we?”

Lance glanced over at Shiro, who had apparently found a dance partner in the white-haired guy with the scar over his eye.

“Ooooh, Kakashi. That’s going to be tough,” Konohamaru muttered in Lance’s ear.

Lance could tell, because the floor was actually clearing off now. It seemed that they weren’t the only people who had decided to do some kind of ballroom dance to the song, and everyone that _didn’t_ want to ballroom was clearing off to the sides to watch. Lance spotted a few familiar faces; the woman in purple with the ridiculously long blonde hair, Ino or whatever, was dancing with the redheaded woman in glasses that had figured out Keith’s half-Galra thing before even seeing him. Lance stopped looking at them after a moment, because watching them move made him feel like he was watching some kind of predator.

“I really hope you aren’t planning on beating Ino and Karin, because they’re both trained to be, like, the best at this sort of thing.” Konohamaru’s voice was more sympathetic than anything, and Lance turned to look at him with surprise. Their noses were only an inch apart, so it wasn’t like Lance had a decent view of his face from this angle.

“Yeah?”

“Either of them on their own is, like, terrifyingly competent at drawing the eyes of a crowd, but,” and here he spun Lance around, dipping at the end. He continued speaking when they were standing straight again. “Put them together, and they could make a god stop and take notice.”

Lance looked over at them again, and then back at Konohamaru. “I can see why.”

The two of them paused with the music, Lance lifting his leg until it stuck straight up in the air, shooting a challenging look at Shiro and the white-haired guy over his shoulder. A laugh from Konohamaru, a mild adjustment of stance to give his shoe something solid to push against, and Lance was being dipped again, legs still almost straight from one foot to the other.

“I’m guessing the word ‘green’ means a different thing to you than to us,” Konohamaru said, even as they kept moving, deliberate and skilled. “I love the song, don’t get me wrong; it’s very high energy while sounding just a little threatening. But I’m also fairly certain that I’m missing something.”

“The color is used to represent greed, envy, and money in general.”

“Ah. Makes sense.”

“The song is going to end soon, by the way,” Lance said. “So get ready to pose.”

“At your command, good sir.”

Lance bit his lip, not even bothering to hide his grin.

Lance and Shiro didn’t even bother trying to decide on a winner, just looked over at the women who’d dominated the floor with an air of danger and charisma, and then back at each other.

“Maybe another time?”

“Sounds good.”

Of course, Lance insisted on dancing through “Get Lucky,” and he would have been remiss to _not_ drag Konohamaru into a salsa when “Let’s Get Loud” came on. And the rest of the night just kept passing like that. Dancing for a few songs with new friends and old, trying to make sure that Keith and Shiro didn’t drink _too_ much (the blonde woman in charge assured him that she’d make sure they stayed alive and healthy), and taking a break here and there to talk and flirt.

And, yeah, there was maybe another song where Lance and Hunk and Pidge all jumped into a dance that Lance had _personally_ choreographed and taught them back at the Garrison, because Fallout Boy’s “Uma Thurman” was just too good to pass up, okay?

So… the night was fun. It was fun and excitement and adrenaline-fueled disaster in a handful of hours, including a few more Konoha Specials, though Lance heard someone say “ _fucking_ Konoha-nin” during one of them, which was… well. Probably fair.

“So,” Konohamaru asked, breathless during one break as the night started winding down. “Do you wanna come back to my place, or…?”

“Can I ask how old you are, first?” Lance blurted out. “I just realized that I’ve been dancing all night with you, and I didn’t even check to see if you’re my age or not.”

“Eighteen and a half,” Konohamaru said. “I don’t think a year and a half is an unreasonable difference… unless you were lying to TenTen earlier?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Lance said, and took a deep breath. “Okay, so. I do like you. A lot. But I’m not comfortable with going past some heavy petting or whatever. If that’s okay with you, then…”

“Heavy petting?”

“Uh, making out?”

Understanding lit Konohamaru’s eyes. “Ah. Okay. Yeah, we don’t have to go all the way if you’re not comfortable with it. We don’t actually have to leave for what you want, though, so that probably makes things easier for you. You can go back to your, uh, Castle? You can go back to your Castle after we’re done without some Walk of Shame bullshit.”

“…actually, if you don’t mind… wanna help me prank my friends?”

Konohamaru grinned, wide and toothy. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well, you see, I haven’t actually managed to get anywhere with the aliens I’ve flirted with before, for a variety of reasons, mostly that there was a time crunch whenever someone _was_ interested, and that people weren’t often interested when there _wasn’t_ something getting in the way,” Lance explained. “So as far as the team is concerned, I’m pretty much incapable of getting someone interested as more than a joke or a trick.”

“Does it bother you?”

“I mean, they haven’t really had any evidence to the contrary,” Lance said, shrugging. “But the point is, I’ve also told them that I don’t intend to lose my virginity to a stranger, no offense.”

“None taken; we only met tonight, so that’s probably a good choice.”

 “Thanks. Anyway, we _could_ go back to your place, just… without anything too serious happening. And then I come back to the Castle in the morning, possibly covered in hickeys, refusing to answer any questions with a straight answer, possibly with a _very_ attractive young ninja trailing me…” Lance raised an eyebrow in what he hoped was an enticing way. “So, what do you say?”

“You want me to help you convince your friends that you got laid despite not going that far.”

“If you’re okay with it.”

“Damn straight I am. I may not have stolen the title for Konoha’s prank king yet, but I’m always down for a good trick. You wanna make out here before leaving to sell the bit?”

“God, yes.”

o.o.o.o.o

Allura sometimes understood the humans’ tendency to stare at the sky or ceiling whenever something particularly aggravating was happening. She gathered it was something of a religious matter to them, but asking the stars for help made sense to even her on occasion.

“Your hair is so _fluffy_ ,” Shiro whispered, leaning heavily against her and playing with said hair. His face was bright red, and he appeared to have long since lost the shirt that he’d stripped off during that one ridiculous song.

(Well, _plenty_ of the songs had been ridiculous, so that wasn’t saying much, but that was irrelevant.)

“How do you keep it so clean and fluffy?” Shiro wondered aloud. “I can’t find any shampoo or conditioner or _anything_ on the ship, and Lance complains about it all the time. Is it magic?” He gasped aloud, and whispered. “Allura, is your hair _magic?”_

Allura very much understood the desire to ask the stars themselves for help. “No, Shiro, my hair isn’t magic.”

“Oh, okay. It’s still pretty. And fluffy.” He patted her hair again, lightly, like it was a small pet or something. “That’s not surprising, though. Everything about you is pretty. ‘Specially your eyes. And you can throw me like _fifty feet_. That’s amazing.”

Allura felt her irritation grow. “As flattering as that may be, I’m sure you’re going to regret saying it in the morning.”

“But it’s true,” Shiro protested, looking at her with wide, imploring eyes. “You _did_ throw me really far. And you _are_ really pretty.”

Allura looked to the local leaders in some hope of help, but they were just watching in amusement. Coran was still making the rounds to talk to people, and Keith was nowhere to be found, but he’d seemed to be getting progressively _more_ interested in dancing as everyone else’s energy dwindled, so he was probably somewhere in the writhing crowd. Hunk and Pidge were in their own little world with some shinobi at the sound system; Allura was fairly certain she remembered Hunk mentioning that they were talking about making the translation matrix for writing more accurate, during one of his trips down to the bar for water bottles. And Lance…

Allura’s eyes found him, and she felt a tiny bit of horror work its way up her throat. “Shiro, please tell me Lance isn’t doing what I think he’s doing.”

Shiro turned to follow her line of sight, and sounded far, far too calm when he spoke. “Lance is sitting on a ninja’s lap and making out with him. Probably. I can’t tell from this angle and my vision is kind of swimming.”

“That would be alcohol,” Tsunade said, voice dry. “How long has it been since he had alcohol, did you say?”

“Some two years, I believe.” Allura kept her voice level, though her eyes were still trained on Lance and whoever he was with. “I would prefer to worry over my other paladin, at this moment.”

“Relax. Konohamaru’s a good kid. He won’t do anything your brat doesn’t agree to first, and if the brat _does_ agree… well, Sarutobi’s got a near-perfect completion record when it comes to seduction missions. I’d assume that he knows what he’s doing.” Tsunade snorted, taking a sip of her alcohol, and by Altea, how much ethanol could these humans _drink?_

Allura turned to gape at Tsunade in what wasn’t _quite_ horror, but came very close. “Seduction missions?”

“Close your mouth, girl, you’ll catch flies.” Tsunade shook her head. “Yes, seduction missions. We didn’t let him take full ones until he turned eighteen of course, but he’s an infiltration specialist that took an interest in them. We don’t turn people down from those missions most of the time, because they’re some of the only missions in the village that shinobi are allowed to veto their own involvement in, and most people _do._ If a person decides to do seduction missions on the regular, we’re going to take advantage of it, because the only thing drawing people to _those_ missions is the increased pay.”

“He’s a _child_.”

“He’s been killing on the field of battle since the age of twelve, and running assassinations since fifteen. Shouldn’t you be a little more concerned about _that_ than about the fact that he sometimes has sex with a target now that he’s old enough for us to let him?” Tsunade swirled the drink in her hand, one eyebrow raised in Allura’s direction. “Differing cultures, princess. Our values and yours are not the same.”

Allura shut her mouth with an audible click, stifling the retort that sprung to mind and focusing back in on her diplomacy training.

_Do not offend the locals, Allura. Do. Not._

“Allura?” Shiro said, somehow feeling heavier than he had thus far. “C’n we go back to the Castle? I’m tired.”

Allura pursed her lips, and sighed. “I’m sure the other paladins can make their ways back without our help. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, they’re good kids. They’ll be okay.” Shiro laughed a little as Allura helped him up. “Mm, okay, let’s go. Bye, ‘Kashi!”

The white-haired man (Kakashi, Allura reminded herself) gave that odd little eye-smile and waved. “Bye!”

o.o.o.o.o

Everyone from the Castle that had gone to the party made it back that night, even if it was only in the wee hours of the morning.

Everyone except for Lance and Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Keith is fine, except for a potential hangover. You'll find out what happened next chapter.
> 
> I feel like Lance and Shiro are both REALLY GOOD AT DANCING while the rest of the team is just like "Okay. You... you do that. We will be over here, not bending our bodies into shapes they should not hold. Also filming this for YouTube."
> 
> Poor Coran decided to talk to two of the least friendly people in the area. Poor Allura ended up with the third. Unsurprisingly, the two Uzumaki-blooded women that are left aren't really the best kinds of people to talk to. They're kind of assholes, actually.
> 
> I'm also going to say right here and now that Lance and Konohamaru are going to be one of the few stable paladin&ninja friendships in the fic, and I can't wait to write it. There are going to be other friendships, of course, but most of them are going to... need development, to put it bluntly. And the whole "You're too perfect" thing with Konohamaru and Lance isn't actually a commentary on either of them being actually perfect (because, let's face it, no one is), but rather a commentary that will eventually be noted in-fic that they're just _unnervingly_ similar people. They're going to develop too, though, don't worry. It just won't be as... rocky.
> 
> Used this as a reference? http://list25.com/top-25-craziest-breakdance-moves/


	7. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the plot makes its long-anticipated comeback.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH SHIT GUESS WHO'S BACK
> 
> As before: Ei = A = the Raikage. Word throws a fit when I write Killer A, so I romanize as Ei instead.

Keith woke up with a pounding headache.

It took a few moments for anything else to really make it through, and when something _did_ , it was the thought that someone was going to be insufferably smug about this.

(… _everyone_ was going to be insufferably smug about this.)

It took a few minutes for Keith to work up the effort to open his eyes, and when he did, it was to the somewhat expected but entirely unwelcome presence of sunlight.

It took another thirty seconds for him to remember that, as he wasn’t at his shack, his room shouldn’t _have_ sunlight, seeing as his rooms on the castle and Marmora base _didn’t have windows_.

Keith’s eyes snapped back open as he forced himself into an upright position.

The rapid beat of his heart slowed down as he realized that his surroundings, while unfamiliar, weren’t actually indicative of any danger.

It… looked like a guest room, actually. The décor was mostly in white and various shades of purple, and most of it was vaguely impersonal and very, very clean. It looked like the kind of picture he’d have found in the pages of the Home and Garden magazines one of his foster moms had read in her spare time and left lying around. An iris-themed clock on the nightstand declared it to be nearly one o’clock, which… well, it wasn’t very surprising, given the kind of hour he’d gone to bed at.

Keith had no idea whose guest room it _was_ , but he hadn’t been drunk enough to vomit, going by the taste in his mouth. Plus, if he’d had to wake up in a stranger’s bed, he was glad that it wasn’t _in their bed_. Blackout drunk sex wasn’t on his list of planned activities at any point.

Tentatively, he slipped out from under the covers that someone had thoughtfully pulled over him, and closed his eyes as his vision swam again. His body didn’t want to move. Good to know.

It took longer than he would have liked to admit, but Keith eventually made it to the door. There were voices down the hall, feminine and vaguely familiar, and he made his way towards them once he thought he was steady enough to do so.

The reason the voices were familiar became apparent when he made it to what was probably a dining room.

The blonde woman looked up and smiled at him. It wasn’t the nicest smile, but it wasn’t particularly fake-looking either. “Looks like someone finally woke up.”

Keith blinked at her, and then figured he probably needed to know these women’s names before he did anything else. “You’re… Ino, right?”

“Mm-hm.” Ino nodded. “And this is Hinata. How much do you remember of last night?”

He considered that for a moment. “Most of it? I can’t tell if my memory fades out because of the booze or because I was tired, though.”

“My money’s on tired,” Ino said. “Hinata-chan?”

“A mixture,” Hinata said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Uh… yeah.” Keith shifted awkwardly in the doorway. “Can I ask why you…”

“Your friends had already all left for other reasons, and we didn’t know how to get into your castle alone, given all the technology.” Ino shrugged, taking a sip of—oh, that was tea. “We figured it would be easier to just put you in the guest room until morning.”

“It’s one in the afternoon,” Hinata told her.

“Details,” Ino dismissed, waving one hand. Hinata laughed softly, going back to the papers in front of her. “Do you want some food before we send you back up? We’ll probably be coming with you, since we’re wanted at negotiations. They don’t start until three, but still.”

“Uh… sure.” Keith slipped into one of the chairs and tried not to fidget awkwardly. “So… you’re roommates?”

“Girlfriends,” Ino corrected. “Not that our clans are all that happy about it…”

“Because it’s gay?” Keith asked.

“Because of politics,” Hinata corrected. “We’re both the current heirs to our clans, and nobody’s happy about the potential conflicts regarding long-term effects if we get _married_.”

“Honestly, the gay of it all should make things easier,” Ino said, smirking as she set aside her tea and went back to her own paperwork. “If we get sperm donors, then the children aren’t going to be half one clan and half other. Much easier to declare the next heirs that way.”

“I’m already considering stepping aside for Hanabi…” Hinata mused.

Keith blinked, uncomprehending.

“Let me show you how to work the rice cooker,” Ino said when she caught the look on his face, probably taking pity on how out of his depth he was.

He was kind of okay with that.

o.o.o.o.o

Shiro sat at the dining room table with his forehead pressed against the cool metal, trying very hard to will away the throbbing in his skull. The cold of the metal helped, as did the coffee that Hunk had made from supplies provided by the ninjas, which…

Oh god, he’d _missed_ coffee.

“Is it legal to marry the concept of coffee beans?” Shiro asked, voice muffled against the table.

“Uh, no,” Pidge said. “A concept doesn’t have legal standing or any way of signing a contract, so no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” came the dry reply.

“What about cacao trees?” Shiro asked.

“You can’t marry anything we use parts of for food, Shiro.”

Shiro pushed himself up enough to actually drink some more of the coffee, and moaned.

“Cut him some slack,” Hunk said, sidling in with… oh god, _pancakes_. Real pancakes, with no goo in sight. “He hasn’t had coffee in literal years.”

“I know, but he still legally can’t _marry_ a _concept_ ,” Pidge said.

“Shhhhh, my child,” Hunk said, patting Pidge on the head. “By the way, I forgot to ask when I came in: pronouns?”

“Uh… back to she/her, I think,” Pidge said, making a face. “I don’t know, gender is weird. I think I’m drifting back towards girl for a while.”

“I feel you,” Hunk said solemnly, delivering the pancakes in front of Shiro. After a moment, he said, “Please don’t faceplant in the food.”

“The only human food we’ve had since coming to space is milk-based, and that was a stroke of luck,” Shiro reminded him, eyes still on the pancakes. “Let me have this.”

“Okay, then,” Hunk said. “You can have it.”

Allura came into the room, eyes on a holographic screen, and made a face within two steps. She looked up, eyes narrowed. “What _is_ that smell?”

“Coffee and pancakes,” Shiro told her. “You’re not stopping us.”

“I’m with him on that one,” Pidge said, nodding.  “Wanna try one?”

Allura came closer and leaned in, sniffing the pancakes and coffee in turn. She jerked back, her nose wrinkling into an expression of disgust. “Yes to the food. No to the... drink.”

“More for me, then,” Shiro said, taking another sip.

“It’s okay, Allura. I think coffee’s gross too,” Pidge assured her. She paused. “Well, I think the taste is gross. The smell is okay, depending.”

“Wet coffee grinds smell the worst,” Hunk agreed. “But ground coffee that was just opened, beans, or the actual drink? That’s good.”

“Maybe Alteans can smell caffeine,” Pidge suggested. “So it registers as a poison through smell alone.”

Allura closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Right. Moving on. After last ni—”

“Oh _hell_ ,” Shiro said, sitting up straight and staring at Allura in horror. “Did I flirt with you last night?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m _so sorry_ ,” Shiro groaned, burying his face in his hands. “That was really inappropriate, and you shouldn’t have had to deal with it.”

“Apology accepted,” Allura said with a light smile. “Now, Coran is checking on the scanners. Where are Keith and Lance?”

“Keith hasn’t called in,” Pidge said. “But he made sure he was wearing his tracker, so I’ve got his vitals. He only just woke up, but he’s mostly fine, just kinda dehydrated.”

Allura frowned. “Dehydrated?”

“Hangover,” Hunk and Pidge said in unison, and then high-fived. Pidge continued alone, “Alcohol consumption leads to dehydration if you forget to drink water. As for Lance, I haven’t heard back yet. Looks like he’s asleep, though. They’re both down somewhere in... Konoha?”

Shiro nodded, confirming that she’d gotten the name right.

“Anyway,” Pidge said. “Want me to call Lance and see what’s up?”

“I’ll do so myself,” Allura sighed. “We need him back here for the negotiations.”

“I mean, not _really_ ,” Hunk muttered. “That’s mostly you and Shiro and Coran.”

“I’d still rather have all of my paladins here, accounted for, and presenting a professional front,” Allura said. She tapped a few things on her screen, and a call popped open above the table.

o.o.o.o.o

Lance groaned as his phone went off, raising his head just enough for the light to register as he tried to locate the source of the ringing. It took a few moments for the night before to register, but when it did, he snorted.

“Is that yours?” Konohamaru called from somewhere else in the apartment. Probably the kitchen, going by the smell of eggs and bacon.

(Oh god. Eggs and bacon. _Yes._ )

“Yeah!” Lance called back, leaning off the bed to dig through his pants. He’d borrowed a pair of pajama bottoms the night before, though he’d stayed shirtless, and—

Lance glanced down at himself and grinned. While they’d kept to the agreement of not going below the belt, there’d been more than a little making out before they fell asleep, and his skin was covered in the bites and bruises to prove it.

The phone rang shrilly again, and Lance turned it on, rolling over onto his back and holding it up as high as he could so the video would reach.

“Sup,” he said, pretending he didn’t see the looks of shock. He grinned. “Hey, are those pancakes?”

“Lance!” Allura shouted, face already burning red. “Where is—where is your shirt?!”

“On the floor, probably,” Lance said. He tried to continue, but was caught off guard by a yawn. He craned his head to one side afterwards, relishing in the cracking noises that came as he stretched. “What’s up?”

“Are those _hickeys?”_ Pidge demanded.

“...yep,” Lance said, smirking as widely as he could. “Last night was fun.”

“Lance, move the camera,” Hunk said. He sounded more exasperated than anything, which Lance figured was probably just a side effect of having been friends for so long. “You’re making people uncomfortable.”

“Boooo,” Lance whined dramatically, but sat up and reoriented the camera so that his face and shoulders were the only things visible. “Seriously, those pancakes look delicious.”

“They are,” Shiro said. He looked kinda... haggard. “Are you gonna come back for breakfast?”

Lance grinned again. He let his grin widen. “Nope.”

“...why?” Allura asked, like she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.

“I’m thinking breakfast in bed would be nice,” Lance said cheerily, and ignored Pidge and Hunk’s groaning. Past the camera, he saw Konohamaru come in with the breakfast plates, and met his eyes. Lance jerked his head towards the space that was still left on the bed, and Konohamaru snorted, sitting down and passing one of the plates over into Lance’s free hand. “Say hi.”

Konohamaru leaned over into the camera space, waving with a fork that had some greasy, only-just-stopped-sizzling bacon on the end. “Yo.”

“Hi,” Shiro said flatly. Pidge quietly had a conniption in the background. “You know what? Okay. Were you safe?”

“Yeah,” Lance snorted. “I’m not _that_ inexperienced.”

“I’m _definitely_ not,” Konohamaru said with a grin of his own, settling back against the headboard. He lazily ate a bite of scrambled eggs.

“Is there going to be some kind of political fallout? Did everyone involved consent?” Shiro continued, clearly pretending he hadn’t gotten the implications.

“No fallout, full consent,” Lance confirmed.

“Great, then I don’t care. You have an hour and a half to be fully showered, dressed, and ready to go here on the ship. I expect you on the castle in less than an hour.”

“I don’t have a hovercraft to get back up to the entrance,” Lance reminded him.

“We’ll figure something out,” Shiro said flatly, and then looked at Allura. “Can we end the call so I can go back to my food?”

“...Shiro’s right,” Allura said after a long moment. “Castle in an hour. Goodbye.”

“See ya,” Lance drawled as the call cut out, and then fell sideways in a pile of giggles onto Konohamaru’s chest. “Oh my god.”

“I expected more,” Konohamaru said. “Think you can remember to fake a limp when we go back?”

“Uh... probably not,” Lance admitted. “You?”

Konohamaru smiled. “Infiltration specialist, remember?”

o.o.o.o.o

Keith got back to the Castle before Lance did, though it was clear that everyone else had been there all night. Hinata and Ino had actually come with him, though they’d detached the second they’d seen Coran to go talk about... something. There were a lot of words he didn’t recognize and a lot of talk of brains. Keith wasn’t sure he wanted to know more.

The sight of pancakes made him regret eating breakfast already, but he reminded himself that he didn’t really need to hold on to the memory of food anymore. They were going to have ingredients. Hunk could make stuff. _All_ of them could make stuff. It was going to be amazing.

 “You look like shit,” Pidge informed him.

“Thanks,” Keith said drily, sitting down at the table. “Where’s Lance?”

The faces that everyone around him immediately pulled were not encouraging.

“He’s—”

The door slammed open.

“Right here, my lovelies!” Lance crowed, jumping into the kitchen with his arms spread wide. “Who missed me?”

“Lance, if you keep yelling, I’m locking you in... I don’t know. We’re not in orbit, so one of the airlocks, maybe,” Shiro groaned.

“Wow, my claustrophobia regarding airlocks and med bay pods is _not_ going to thank you for that one,” Lance said, voice cheery but tone vaguely warning.

“The boring officer’s lounge on the fifty-third floor, then,” Shiro amended. “Nothing to do and no one to talk to, for hours.”

“Truly, you are an asshole,” Lance practically chirruped. “Are you hungover? You sound hungover.”

“Yes, now just... shut up. Please.”

“How did you get up here?” Keith asked.

“How did you?” Lance shot back.

Keith frowned. “I got carried up on the shoulder of the lady whose guest room I woke up in.”

“Wait, you slept in someone’s guest room?” Lance asked, obviously delighted. “What happened?”

“I passed out and they took pity,” Keith said flatly. “They’re both talking to Coran about brains now. It was the blonde that did the mind dive or whatever, and the girl that looked like she was blind but really, really isn’t.”

“Names?” Allura asked.

“Ino and Hinata,” Keith said immediately. “I think Hinata is the older sister of that girl that dumped a drink on Lance’s head last night.”

“I’d be offended that you’re referencing that, but all’s well that ends well, so...” Lance linked his hands behind his head, grinned wide, and slouched back in his chair.

Everyone else groaned.

“Lance, please no,” Hunk said.

Keith blinked. “What happened?”

“Lance didn’t come back to the castle last night either,” Pidge said. “He... had _fun_.”

Keith blinked again. “I don’t get it.”

Lance smirked, tilted his head to the side, and pulled on the collar of his jacket.

“Are those...” Keith squinted. “Are those _hickies?”_

Lance’s smirk widened into a full on grin, so wide that he closed his eyes. “Yep!”

“Bullshit,” Keith said. “You... wait. Wait, no. That guy you were hanging out with last night?”

“My ride up here was a little sexier than yours,” Lance said, like it was an answer.

“Wait, he’s in here?” Hunk asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where?” Shiro asked.

Lance pointed upwards.

When Keith craned his head upwards, there was indeed a person sitting upside down on the smooth metal of the ceiling.

The boy there waved cheerily down at them. “Yo!”

“Get down from there!” Allura demanded. “Or I will ask that _you_ be the one to clean away the footprints you’re tracking across my castle!”

He tilted his head considering. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

And then he dropped.

Keith had seen a lot of weird shit in his time in space, but watching a human person plummet from that height still somehow sent a jolt through his heart.

“This is Konohamaru,” Lance said, as the guy, apparently Konohamaru, came to lean against Lance’s chair and gave them all a nonchalant wave. “He’s fun.”

“I’m _the most_ fun,” Konohamaru confirmed, cheeky grin firmly in place.

“Was that a _limp?”_ Hunk squeaked.

“This must be what hell is like,” Pidge muttered. “Now there’s _two_ of them.”

“Matt didn’t count?” Shiro muttered.

“No, no, _Matt_ is not nearly this _full of shit,_ ” Pidge hissed.

“I get the feeling I’m stirring a pot,” Konohamaru commented mildly.

“What happened to not losing your virginity to a stranger?” Hunk demanded.

Lance shared a look with Konohamaru, then turned back to Hunk.

He shrugged.

Keith put his head down on his arms and tried to ignore the ensuing ruckus.

o.o.o.o.o

Several hours later, Shiro took a sip of water in an attempt to hide his irritation as yet another wave of arguing broke out across the negotiation table. It was probably a futile attempt, considering all the ninjas, but still. He tried.

Once again, they were stuck. Everyone wanted to send _someone_ to space with Voltron to help in the war, given the situation, but nobody wanted the someone in question to come from their village. Shiro got the feeling that, had they sent just normal shinobi, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Even ‘bog-standard’ shinobi would have been more than a little help, but if there was one thing the leaders here agreed on, it was that the Galra were enough of a threat to warrant what they called A- or S-rank soldiers.

Not that this helped them come to any _other_ kind of agreement, of course.

Iwa thought it would leave their defenses too low in case another war of some sort broke out planetside, and Konoha and Kiri both argued that they were still rebuilding their own villages from past conflicts and couldn’t spare the manpower. Kiri cited a civil war from a decade earlier, and Konoha referenced something called the ‘Day of Pein’ from six years before. Kumo argued that sending a team composed solely of people from one village wasn’t fair to the rest, and Suna claimed a general long-term shortage of manpower that none of the other villages contested, which meant it was probably true.

“What about a mixed team?” Allura had suggested at one point. “One person from each village. It does not put undue pressure on any of your villages, correct?”

As it turned out, no, that wasn’t acceptable either, because it still meant sending out an A- or S-rank shinobi, which were apparently in high demand, on a long-term mission with no independent way of getting home, and even that was too much. Also, suspicions were high and _apparently_ some of the villages were convinced that their own soldier would get hit by some friendly fire from another shinobi for... some reason.

Shiro took another sip of water.

He let his eyes roam over the room, frowning a little when he saw the two ridiculously overpowered boys that had bickered through the entire fight whispering to one another in the corner. Granted, calling them boys was probably overkill, since they were both adults, but given how they acted, Shiro felt more or less comfortable with it. The moment they _stopped_ whispering had him feeling that things were either about to be solved or about to go wildly off the rails, or possibly both.

“Permission to speak?” Sasuke asked drily, stepping forward and waving his sole hand to get some attention.

“Permission granted,” Tsunade said, if a little begrudgingly.

“Does the team _need_ to be from the major villages?” Sasuke asked. “Or can I volunteer Taka?”

Shiro was lost.

“We can trust them to at least defend the planet,” Naruto tossed in. “I mean, they might not like us, but working against these Galra guys definitely goes in their favor.”

“And it’s not like you lose anything if we ditch you the moment we’re in space,” Sasuke added.

Naruto elbowed him in the ribs. “Dude, I’m trying to help you.”

“I’m just making it obvious that this is a no-lose scenario for them.”

“And if you decide to join these Galra yourselves?” Onoki demanded.

“When was the last time anyone in Taka bowed their heads to authoritarian dictatorship?” Sasuke asked drily. “I’ll remind you: it’s been a while.”

“Money,” Terumi suggested. “For enough, you’ll do it.”

“I think we’ve also had enough of extraterrestrials taking over the planet and draining the life from it to power their own armies,” Sasuke said.

There were actually quite a few winces at that.

Shiro was dreading this context, but it was clearly more than necessary.

“Should I ask?” Allura’s voice broke through the room, quiet but solid.

The answer came directly from the woman who’d presented herself as a key leader for the entire continent from the moment they arrived.

“The primary reason for our ability to manipulate chakra is Ootsutsuki Kaguya, an alien who spread her power and genetics into the human population after eating a magic fruit from an ancient tree that was larger than most mountains,” Tsunade told them. “We’d say it’s just legend, but she came back to life six years ago after one of her sons brought back the tree, and then we had to trap her inside a new moon before she locked the entire planet in a never-ending illusion in order to build an army to fight her family members by turning us all into yet more Zetsu clones.”

Tsunade took a long swig of the bottle on her desk as Shiro, Allura, and Coran just stared.

“You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?” Shiro asked.

“We don’t like talking about her,” Mifune said. “For reasons that I believe are obvious.”

“How did you trap someone _inside a new moon?”_ Allura demanded.

After a moment’s hesitation, everyone pointed at Naruto and Sasuke.

Naruto smiled and waved. Sasuke did not.

“They successfully put away the most dangerous person in our planet’s history,” Sakura said. “And then tried to kill each other.”

“Self-defense!” Naruto protested.

“The current shinobi system needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from the ashes.”

Another awkward silence suffused the room at Sasuke’s disturbingly calm assertion, and then Ei grunted. “Maybe we _should_ get him off the planet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the one hand, I'm no longer satisfied reading over my past chapters. On the other hand, this whole fic is a self-indulgent mess anyway, so...
> 
> Also! My shipping preferences and gender headcanons have shifted DRASTICALLY since the last time I wrote this, as you can see in things like me removing or nullifying Shallura elements. I'm no longer comfortable enough with the ship to write it (though I can read it if it's written in the right context), so that's one thing I'm definitely changing.


End file.
